Transcript: HARSHA WALIA on Dismantling Imagined, Militarized, and Colonial Borders /211
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Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast, I’m Ayana Young. Today I’m speaking with long-time advocate for migrant justice, Indigenous rights, anticapitalist movements, and economic justice, Harsha Walia.
Harsha Walia That's the irony of the capitalist dream, right? Is to die or to work yourself to death.
Ayana Young Harsha’s advocacy work has resulted in significant transformation in government policies at the municipal, provincial, federal, and international levels on issues relating to immigration detention, women’s equality, Indigenous land rights, policing practices, and social assistance regulations. She is also the award-winning author of Undoing Border Imperialism, co-author of Never Home: Legislating Discrimination in Canadian Immigration, as well as Red Women Rising: Indigenous Women Survivors in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Harsha is currently the Executive Director of British Columbia’s Civil Liberties Association and remains active in social movements like No One Is Illegal and the Women’s Memorial March Committee.
Well, Harsha, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.
Harsha Walia Thank you so much for having me.
Ayana Young I'd like to begin by asking you about your relationship to borders and migration. What narratives cultivated your desire to understand and dismantle imagined militarized and colonial borders alike?
Harsha Walia Yeah, I think for me, my relationship to borders is probably, for most people doing this work, is deeply personal, and also very much connected to communities and movements in struggle. So my family, on the maternal side, comes from the Punjab and during the partition of India and Pakistan, which is one of the world's deadliest and bloodiest displacements as a result of colonial empire and the British Raj, and the resulting partition during which the lowest ends of the estimates are that, you know, 6 million people were killed or died during that process, and millions more were displaced in the Punjab region.
So my family's history has very much been impacted, just you know, a few generations ago by the violent imposition of colonial borders in the Punjab, separating the region. And then also, of course, artificially creating the countries of India and Pakistan. And, you know, really the legacy then of creating India as an imperial power in the region and the ongoing occupation of Kashmir amongst other regions. And so I've been aware of the impacts of borders as a system of power, as something that goes beyond the demarcation of an arbitrary line on territory, but really symbolizing a politics of imperialism and power and deeply embedded forms of racism. So for me, it's personal, in that sense, and also, when I moved to Turtle Island, I lived without status for a brief period of time, was living with precarious status rather, and was under a removal order for a period of time and was briefly incarcerated in an immigration detention center.
So I was very much aware of the ways in which immigration, and again the arbitrariness and the random privilege of where you're born and what passport you carry has so much to do with the ways in which one can navigate space and life. And so, you know, those really emerged alongside just witnessing, especially in the post-911 climate, a heightened politics of fear that press propels, the militarization of borders, and a politics of violence of deportation and detention.
Ayana Young The act of migration has always existed, but in terms of human migration and climate change, we are poised to experience one of the greatest occurrences of global migration the world has ever known. In fact, the projected necessity for migration has been somewhat underestimated and underreported thus far...with this in mind, it feels like there has never been a greater time to remind ourselves that, as you frame it, the state is illegal - people are not. Why must we ensure we rid climate and environmental movements of the concept of illegal personhood?
Harsha Walia Yeah, I think, you know, this is a really important question. For people concerned with the well being of the land and the climate and the earth, and all human and non human life. The past few years, all new displacements and migrations as a result of climate disasters, outpaced, actually, other forms of displacement. So you know, kind of political violence. These are, of course, deeply intertwined. But as much as we can kind of separate them out, we know that climate induced disasters are the fastest growing form and outpace other forms of displacement. And again, you know, here, climate disasters are not natural disasters, right? We know that they're very much informed by the politics of imperialism and racism and power, you know, low lying islands in the Pacific, or, you know, coastal countries like Bangladesh, or islands like Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, etc, are far more vulnerable to climate change and climate displacement not only because of their geography or their topography, but specifically because of legacies of imperialism. And, you know, over extraction and industrial forms of development, you know, and Bangladesh, for example, really the epicenter of sweatshops and the garment industry, a toxic, polluting industry.
So, you know, this is important to contend with, because that is the human impact of climate change, right? When we talk about climate change, and we talk about the kind of downstream effects of it on communities, when places are no longer livable, people are forced to migrate, people are displaced. So it is so important to understand that migration really is the human face of climate disaster, and that we have a responsibility to not turn away. And we have a responsibility, particularly for those who are in the North, and the Global North and carry those kinds of responsibilities to parts of the world, not just the so called Global South but even communities within the Global North: Indigenous communities, Black communities, racialized communities, low income communities that are forced to deal with downstream projects, refineries, pipelines, etc. These are all communities that are also forcibly displaced, often within borders.
So again, you know, it really is the human face of climate crises. And I think the second reason that it's really important is because we're also seeing the growing trend of eco-fascism, where we see the climate and climate crisis, as becoming the kind of new mantra for green nationalism for eco fascism for that kind of, you know, lifeboat Darwinian politics of need to protect our borders, because of the climate crisis. And of course, we know that a number of mass shooters and killers and murderers from the right in recent years have actually used the dogma of green nationalism to justify their white supremist hate, and to justify their anti migrant xenophobia. You know, Marine Le Pen, for example, in France, who's a right wing leader has increasingly justified the closure of borders in Europe under the guise of the ecological crisis, right, saying that there's the carrying capacity of the Earth and for France and for Europe must be limited. So I think it's particularly important for environmentalists and land defenders and advocates and the environmental movement to think deeply about actively fighting against this trend of eco-fascism and to take on the responsibility of solidarity act of solidarity with people who are displaced and migrants who are displaced and refugees who are displaced as a result of climate disasters.
Ayana Young Yeah. And what is your response when you hear the argument of carrying capacity?
Harsha Walia The kind of idea around carrying capacity that really bothers me is that it's connected to the kind of Darwinian logic of population growth and this idea that you know, the Earth has only so much human human carrying capacity. Those conversations always leave out the devastation caused by corporations, right? We know that the largest causes of climate crisis and climate change and global warming is not actually population growth. It's actually the activities of corporations and the military, right, the military is the single largest institutional consumer of hydrocarbons, we know that the largest greenhouse gas emitters on this planet are corporations. And so I think it distorts the kinds of radical transformation that we need from looking at capitalism, it moves us away from looking at forces of power, it moves us away from looking at extractivism as a fundamentally capitalist venture towards looking at, you know, human activity at that individuals scale. And so I think it leads us to, on the one hand, false solutions, and on the other hand, in its worst form, the logic of carrying capacity becomes, again, a way to justify eco-fascism, eugenics, you know, sterilization, population control in countries around the world. And so I think it's a deeply troubling narrative. And again, at its best, it's, it's a distraction,
Ayana Young I think back to the drought in California, and there was so much rhetoric around take shorter showers, don't flush the toilet as much, you know, things like that, which, of course, I think we should all be aware of the water usage we personally are taking, but then there's no mention of how much freshwater say fracking is taking, or oil production. And so, you know, on a personal level, even the water being used in a household is such a much smaller percentage of what extractive industry or corporations commercial industries are using. But yeah, that is not what's talked about. And I think we need to start speaking about that narrative, more generally, in the collective movement. So thank you so much for speaking to that.
In an interview you gave recently, I heard you speak about the dangers of the climate crisis in terms of compelling the State to intervene. Certainly, in the so-called United States, many popular climate movements are doing just that; asking the government to make an intervention without thinking about the ramifications of this ask in terms of further militarization or the haphazard development of short-sighted clean energy projects...I’m hoping you might be willing to elaborate your thoughts on this, as well as what alternatives we can develop, or how can we ensure that in movements for climate justice, we are developing tactics and tools that don’t solidify or necessitate the State’s presence in the long term?
Harsha Walia Yeah, that's a great question. And I think, you know, the call for state intervention in any movement must be taken seriously, we must give thought to that. Right? So it's quite a common occurrence where particularly in the face of the onslaught of capital and capitalism, where the state is kind of seen as the necessary intervener, right? So the state is seen as the kind institution that needs to step in and protect against capitalist onslaught. And you know, in that sense the state is seen either as neutral or as a positive force. And I think, of course, the danger with that is that it fails to recognize state violence as deeply connected to the violence of capital, right? So the corporation's, contrary to popular perception, don't just act without regulation, right? The State makes an active decision to regulate, for example. And I think, you know, the particular dangers of involving the state, in environmental projects, particularly on Indigenous lands, is one that Indigenous people have been pointing out for centuries and decades, right, which is that conservation projects, for example, where the state intervenes and works with environmental movements to conserve land, and brings it into the realm of, you know, in Canada, it's called Crown Land. In other places, that's, you know, public lands. The danger of that, of course, is that it completely distorts and erases Indigenous presence and more importantly, Indigenous rights and title to that land.
And so then, you know, the state kind of takes ownership and jurisdiction and stewardship of those lands at the expense of Indigenous ownership. And also, oftentimes, it also actively destroys Indigenous food systems and Indigenous food sovereignty because then for example, lands that Indigenous people may have been using for fishing or berry picking or harvesting or seal hunting, those then become off-limits to everybody, including Indigenous people. And so, I think, you know, that is something that we have to be deeply aware of.
And again, this also often points to the racism of dominant environmental movements, were their conservation projects are inherently often at odds with Indigenous sovereignty, because it doesn't take into account Indigenous People's relationships to land where there is actually, you know, hunting or gathering, or you know, tree felling taking place, but in controlled ways. And, you know, based on Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous science, and so when the state gets involved, and that further limits Indigenous people's ability to engage in their practices and technologies. So, you know, that's one example of where we have to be cautious of state intervention.
Another example, again, as this, you know, growing trend to, you know, expanding from, you know, it's basically a conservation project at a, at a macro scale, which is at the, at the level of the entire state and the border, which is where, you know, again, where particularly migrants and humans are seen as the cause of ecological destruction. And so then there's calls for the state to protect ecological diversity and to protect ecosystems by limiting the number of migrants into the state. And so that often results in, you know, for example, calls by environmental organizations to decrease immigration. And there's some high profile examples of that, like the Sierra Club in the United States in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. You know, they've, of course, since reversed that position, but we see that logic, still flowing through a number of environmental movements. And so in that sense, we see the very dangerous merging of the call for environmental justice through the lens of border controls. And that's, of course, also deeply problematic, because then that's the weaponization of environmental justice, essentially in the service of border militarization and criminalization of migration.
Ayana Young Similar to the previous question, I’d like to talk about what migration looks like with state intervention or hardened borders. ProPublica and the New York Times have modeled how climate refugees might move through present-day borders, and in a piece titled “Where Will Everyone Go?” Abraham Lustgarten writes: “Northern nations can relieve pressures on the fastest-warming countries by allowing more migrants to move north across their borders, or they can seal themselves off, trapping hundreds of millions of people in places that are increasingly unlivable. The best outcome requires not only goodwill and the careful management of turbulent political forces; without preparation and planning, the sweeping scale of change could prove wildly destabilizing. The United Nations and others warn that in the worst case, the governments of the nations most affected by climate change could topple as whole regions devolve into war.” So, on the one hand, we see support for a calculated response from our government, but I think, most likely, unless there is a massive change of heart, under any administration we will see the tightening of borders. Broadly speaking, and in context to the reality that our border policy will be responsible for unlivable conditions, how does the elimination of borders actually curtail violence?
Harsha Walia Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the starting point for me is that borders are violence, right? That the kind of the kinds of violences that we see at borders are symptoms of the border itself being violent. So when we think about families being caged, when we think of people being, you know, dehydrated in the Sonoran Desert, when we see people dying in the Mediterranean in Europe, you know, those kinds of deaths, that we witnessed these, you know, tragic deaths are entirely preventable, were it not for the border. And so one of the kinds of key principles that I advocate for is the freedom to stay, the freedom to move and the freedom to return. And when I say I advocate this, this isn't just me personally, it's of course, comes from social movements, and many others, but I strongly believe in this right, which is that people have the freedom to stay, which means people should not be forcibly displaced, that we are actively fighting against the systems that create displacement, whether that is you know, a mine site, whether that is, you know, occupation, military occupation, whether that sweatshops, whatever kinds of forces are forcing people to move those systems of state violence and imperialism and capitalism that that is forcing millions and millions of people to be on the move. People have the right not to be forcibly removed and displaced and to be able to stay in their homes and their homelands. And people also have the right to migrate, right so that people have the right to move if they are facing violence or persecution, and to not face this violence system of borders.
And one of the kinds of logic that we see states continuously reinforce this logic of, you know, people are crossing illegally, this logic of illegal people are crossing illegally, so we need to crack down on the border. Well, the entire premise of illegal migration is based on the border, right? If we didn't have laws deeply restricting the ability for people to move legally, then we wouldn't have illegal migration. Illegal migration only exists because of border controls. And yet we have this kind of circular logic where then illegal migration, or the narrative or rhetoric of illegal migration forces, further crackdowns on the border, right. So it's the circular logic where border controls create irregular migration that becomes a dog whistle for states to further crackdown on border controls, and then you know, irregular migration becomes more deadly. And so, you know, ultimately, the core of this is a complete 180. You know, the way that we deal with the violence and the political upheaval surrounding borders is not by further cracking down or further militarizing or further regulating or further controlling. It is the elimination of borders, because that is the root of violence around migration. There is nothing inherently violent about migrating right people with privilege with, you know, passports from the United States or Australia, who are white or white passing traveling around the world with much ease and much mobility. So there is nothing inherently violent about the process of moving, it's the controls that create the violence
Ayana Young I want to bring up the correlation between borders and a militarized society and what that means for human rights and civil liberties. Here in the States, some are outraged and shocked by the militarization of places in so-called Oregon, New Mexico and Illinois as federal agents are being deployed by the Trump administration, but these tactics are unsurprising to anyone who has been following the slow and steady growth of Customs and Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security in the aftermath of 9/11. Can you speak to how the mentality of bordering will come home to roost, domestically, sooner or later?
Harsha Walia Yeah, that's a great question. And I think, you know, those are really symbiotic processes. So the kind of bordering that we see at the kind of, you know, physical location of the border. And that we're now seeing in Portland, you know, these aren't kind of separate processes they are completely connected, because the crackdown in Portland really shouldn't be of surprise to people for two reasons. One is of course, we see that kind of counter insurgency at the border and really, you know, the US military engages in counterinsurgency and has engaged in counter insurgency since its very founding. You know, the Indian Wars, processes of enslavement, these are foundational genocides that use counterinsurgency. The US has perfected domestic policing practices, as a result of its Imperial incursions and excursions around the world and Hawaii, in the Philippines, in the context of wars in Central and South America, you know, these are the kinds of parallel processes to domestic policing. And, of course, the other parallel process of what we're seeing in Portland, and counterinsurgency practices and policies, is, you know, what has transpired at the border, for decades, right. So, the kidnapping, and the snatching and separation of families, this is also something that we've seen routinely used in Black neighborhoods, you know, counterinsurgency as a tactic of squashing dissent, you know, really was heightened during the Reagan and Nixon era was, you know, COINTELPRO, all of that is not new. And so I think there's a homology to domestic warfare, and to imperial warfare that the United States has perfected over centuries, and that we just see continue to escalate, which is why it's not surprising.
That's what's happening in Portland, very much involves BORTAC, right, the US Border Patrol Tactical Unit, which patrols not only at the border, but also trains border agents in Iraq, and has been training border agents in Iraq. And so, again, there's this clear through line between what we see the US engaging in terms of counterinsurgency on the streets right now. And the kinds of counterinsurgency it has engaged with in terms of Indigenous and Black genocide within its border, the violence of the border and the violence of imperialism.
Ayana Young I can’t help but think about why, globally, opinions on migration have become so vitriolic. I was reading that in Mexico, the current President, Andres Manual Lopez Obrador, advocated for open borders coupled with foreign aid, signaling that perhaps Mexico could help Central American countries weather the storm - however, the public response to this in Mexico has been incredibly aggressive, with growing marches against immigrants...I’m curious to hear from you why it is that, despite their relatively recent emergence, borders and practice of bordering, have such a firm stake in our imagination?
Harsha Walia You know, really, the fundamental reasons that borders have such a stronghold on our imagination, is that they are ultimately a carceral institution. So in the same way that police and prisons have such a stronghold in our imagination as punitive structures as deeply racist, misogynist, transphobic, classist, oppressive, specifically anti-Black anti-Indigenous structures, all of that is the same reason that borders have such a strong hold on our imagination. And, you know, I recently learned that the word ‘mobility’ derives from ‘mob’, right and so a mob, as we know, is a commonly used framework for policing, both at the border and inner cities, right. So like, particularly poor young groups of especially young men are targeted as mobs. And so prisons and borders share the same logic of fundamentally curtailing mobility by criminalizing mobs. Right. And so, you know, that's really what the explosion of the prison industrial complex was, was to curtail Black freedom. And, you know, that's the same logic of the borders to curtail the movement, the free movement of people across borders. And so the curtailment of movement as a foundational aspect of emancipation and self determination is what carceral systems intend to control. And so, you know, borders really are the epitome of that, right? We want to control the movement of certain undesirable people.
And what is so critical about the hypocrisy of borders is, of course, that people are moving at a, you know, at rates that are unprecedented. So when we talk about the crisis of migration, right, like the refugee crisis, or the migrant crisis, or the border crisis, as liberals or the mainstream media would have it, we're never talking about the mass, mass movement of people on airplanes, you know, in business class flitting around the world every weekend or every day, right? The kinds of ways in which people are moving as tourists or the business class or the middle class is unprecedented. And, of course, the kinds in that, you know, that's not just movement, right? That's a kind of movement that represents capital. People are moving when, you know, creating massive amounts of pollution by using you know, you know, traveling business class and airplanes and they're not, you know, on foot. They're not on perilous journeys. And you know, the Coronavirus is a prime example of this right that the initial spread of COVID was not as a result of migrants even though around the world migrants have been blamed for the Coronavirus, right, like Trump calls it the “Chinese virus”. Trump has justified his border wall by saying migrants bring COVID. Same in Europe in India, it's called the corona jihad. But we know we know that the rapid spread of the Coronavirus was because of the movement of the luxury movement of the business classes and middle classes.
And so, you know, the ways in which the border has become, as you say, you know, such an it's such an entrenched part of our imagination, is precisely because it is intended to control not everyone's movement, but the movement of people that continue to be those who are dispossessed and displaced, right. So poor racialized people moving particularly from the Global South, to the Global North. And that is the same logic again, of the prison industrial complex, right. So the prison industrial complex, when we talk about mass incarceration, not everybody is incarcerated at the same rate, because it is not intended to capture everybody, of course, many others are captured through it. But it is intended specifically to target Black people in the context of, say, the United States and in Canada, you know, Black and Indigenous people, also the same in the United States, Black and Indigenous people.
And that is very much why borders have such a stronghold, it is because they’re a legacy, they’re a legacy of white supremacy, they're a living structure to white supremacy, their living structure to imperialism, their living structure to casteism, and misogyny and more. And so that is why they have such a stronghold in our imagination, because, you know, imperialism as a structure and as a psychology is about being able to extract being able to colonize without having the victims of those systems ever be able to come and live with us, right.
So the, you know, the countries of the North have no problem violating the borders of other countries, right? Like, the US military sees no borders, when it decides to drop drones, right in Afghanistan or Pakistan, the Canadian mining companies, you know, Canada's the epicenter of the world's mining industry. 75% of all of the world's mining companies are headquartered in Canada. Canadian mining companies see no borders, when they decide to go and extract and pollute in Honduras or Tanzania. Right. So borders are, in that sense, when we think about borders being entrenched to our imagination, again, it's a very hypocritical way in which we think about borders, because we're not thinking about the ways in which the military or mining companies or any industry violate borders. We don't talk about that as a violation, or you know, as a crisis of borders, or sovereignty, territorial sovereignty. We don't talk about borders or territorial sovereignty, when we're talking about people vacationing. We're specifically talking about it when we're talking about poor racialized people's movements.
And you know, one last thing I'll say about that reveals, this deeply racialized hypocrisy is that in the United States, the single largest nationality of people who overstay their visas, right, so the single largest nationality of people who overstay their visas, essentially making them “undocumented or illegal”. Contrary to popular perception Are not you know, Mexicans or, you know, some other South or Central American country, it's Canadians. Canadians are the single largest nationality of people who overstay their visas in the United States, but you never hear that talked about as the kind of like crisis of illegals, right? Like, it's just a bureaucratic kind of thing. Like, oh, you know, someone was supposed to leave the country that makes no sense. Why do we have these? You know, in that case, it's like, why do we have these stupid laws, right like that, you know, why does it can you know, if a Canadian decided they wanted to stay two extra days to vacation in the United States? What's the big deal? So in that instance, it's seen as a kind of burden, right, an unfair administrative burden on Canadians. So you know, these are all the ways in which this the border is animated in our imagination precisely and hypocritical ways because that is the intended function of it.
Ayana Young Talking about the destruction/eradication of subsistence cultures in the name of corporate profit, I want to recognize that it’s impossible to understand migration from Central America, without placing these conversations in context to food sovereignty, security, and big agriculture. In Border Imperialism, you write; “Under NAFTA, the Mexican government was forced to eliminate subsidies to corn while corn produced in the United States remained subsidized, thus making US corn cheaper to buy inside Mexico than Mexican corn. As a result over 15 million farmers who lost their farms migrated to the United States to work in low-wage sectors.” I’m also thinking about growing food insecurity across Mexico and Central America where crop yields are declining due to drought and how the United Nations believes that around 65% of farmable lands have already been degraded around the world. Can you share with us how many recent migrations began with corporate eradication of subsistence farming and will now continue due to the desecration of farmable lands by these very same corporations?
Harsha Walia Yeah, I mean, you know, it's huge, because one thing that happened, you know, you mentioned NAFTA and your NAFTA is just one example of literally hundreds of trade agreements, you know, where corporate profit really is the kind of reigning rule of the day, right. So that is the essence of all trade agreements, which is to plunder, particularly countries in the Global South, their economies to open up those lands for extraction, and to allow major agri-businesses to kind of take control of the economy, particularly when it comes to food, right. So the concentration of corporate power, when it comes to food sovereignty, Monsanto being the most obvious example, Cargill being the other. And, you know, so this is, this is the reality of trade agreements, which is the destruction of food sovereignty, particularly, you know, localized food sovereignty for Indigenous communities, for peasant communities, for farming communities. And also, this became heightened after the 2008 food crisis.
So after the 2008 food crisis, we saw major land grabs around the world, Africa, the African continent, was the largest single continent, actually, that was subjected to land grabs, 60% of which were by agri-businesses. And so we're seeing you know, this is kind of a form of greenwashing, right where major land grabs, are justified under the logic of food production, they're also increasingly justified under the guise of biofuel production. So a lot of European land grabbing, it has this kind of insidious, green logic to it, around biofuel production as an alternative to fossil fuel production. And you know, we have these massive, like millions of hectares of land, being grabbed around the world, and again, really focused on the African continent, which completely destroys local food economies, destroys local food, infrastructure and food sovereignty, with a disproportionate impact, of course, on women, right? Because subsistence food economies and the kind of informal food economy, you know, informal is not even the right word, because it just suggests somehow less advanced than or, you know, kind of feeds into that kind of political primitive narrative. These are advanced, informal economies. These are the kinds of economies where women are overly represented, right? Women who are subsistence farmers, and you know, in Mozambique, the massive movement, the no to pro-Savanna campaign in Mozambique was led by women and women farmers in that country because of the massive land grabbing happening there under the guise of rice production.
And so agri-businesses are absolutely complicit in the destruction of food sovereignty, and then the displacement, right one of the impacts of the destruction of food sovereignty is that as farmers around the world are faced with agri-businesses taking over their lands, massive industrial farming taking over small farms, people are displaced. People can no longer live on their lands, they've lost their livelihoods. And this isn't just about your livelihood in the form of coin, this is livelihood in terms of your entire social relationship to the land, and generations of how to tend to the land and knowing the earth and social organizations of life around the land is destroyed. And so the ripple effects are immense. They're immense, you know, one of the most insidious kinds of forms of this. I mean, there's many, you know, you mentioned NAFTA. And you know, one of the results of NAFTA of courses, you know, as corn has become cheaper to buy in Mexico, that means that Mexican farmers are and particularly Indigenous communities who grow corn for whom corn is sacred, right, hundreds of varieties of corn are now being replaced with GMO produce yellow corn, you know, purple corn, all the varieties of corn. And then people are forced to migrate, right.
And so that's what's so insidious about this is now suddenly, migration is all about, you know, illegals and border crossers and migrant crisis without looking at the complicity and the responsibility of US corporations and the US state and the US NAFTA Free Trade Agreement, including the recent 2.0 in creating that that crisis, and this pattern is mirrored around the world. You know, Italy, for example, is one of the largest producers, the one of the largest agri-producers of processed tomatoes. And, you know, Italy has been dumping these, these processed tomatoes, into countries in Europe as you know, just across the Mediterranean, into countries in Africa, including Ghana. And so Ghana's local food sovereignty and tomato, you know, the ability to grow tomatoes in Ghana has been completely destroyed by food dumping by agri-businesses of tomatoes. And now we have farmers from Ghana, who have become migrant workers who have to pick the very same tomatoes in Italy that destroyed their local food production. Right. So this kind of cycle by which, you know, we don't ask how people become migrant workers, right? It just takes on a category and about itself, right? Like, what kind of violence of, you know, Mexican migrant workers having to pick and process berries and corn in farms and fields in the United States when their own food and farms have been destroyed. Right? So there's a cycle to this violence that connects us, and also that implicates agribusinesses.
Ayana Young Following this train of thought, it’s predicted that because of a lack of farmable lands, and the inability to survive off the land, we are going to see an increase in urbanization and urban migration. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on urban migration, and the role of the urban area amidst a changing climate as it relates to migration?
Harsha Walia Yeah, I mean, one of the things around migration is that we tend to think of migration as cross border migration, right, so when someone crosses a national border, but one of the largest impacts of capitalism over the past few centuries, and particularly in the last century, has been rural to urban migration, right? So as we see the destruction of land based economies as we see the destruction of land based subsistence life, particularly for Indigenous and peasant communities, you know, this kind of rural to urban migration and the kind of bloating of the urban centers and then suburbia from that, is a huge symptom really, of capitalism, right.
And we can, you know, some of the densest countries in the world now, like, you know, Dhaka in Bangladesh is one of the densest urban cities in the entire world. And, you know, it's estimated that literally thousands of people come to Dhaka every day, from rural Bangladesh, right and there's many reasons for that, for why people are forced into this kind of rural to urban migration in, in Bangladesh, for example. But one of the most, you know, not so kind of overly simplified, but one of the most general reasons for that is the decades long imposition of structural adjustment on Bangladesh.
So structural adjustment is, you know, the World Bank and IMF, International Monetary Fund programs of austerity, and basically just, you know, capitalist restructuring of entire economies in the Global South, right. So during the 80s and 90s. This was known as the ‘dictatorship of debt’, where countries in the Global South, you know, kind of claimed their formal independence from colonial states, but we're deeply impoverished. And were in this dictatorship. And, you know, we're in debt in terms of being able to build their infrastructures. That debt was weaponized. And the condition of these loans by the World Bank and the IMF, over 200 countries have had, the World Bank and IMF forced on them. And Bangladesh was one of the first countries to have the massive kind of package of structural adjustment. And this meant, you know, several things, you had to nationalize your industry. So things that used to be nationalized, were then held by private industry. So in Bangladesh, subsistence level shrimp farming, and coastal communities that used to fish and engage in rice cultivation, and, you know, kind of coastal agricultural economies were bought out by large private business interests. You also have the gutting of social infrastructure, right? So things like health care, education, childcare, all of these kinds of basic social services started to become gutted. They were privatized, or completely gutted. So just this massive project of austerity was imposed, and special economic zones were forced into countries particularly, you know, this was pioneered in Bangladesh, where special economic zones became areas that were tax free havens, so companies could go in and set up shop without paying taxes. They were free of any environmental regulation and unionization was prohibited. So when we know Bangladesh now, as the kind of, you know, garment, the garment industry is so well known in Bangladesh, right? So the mass industrial disaster that happened in Rana Plaza, right, a few years ago, where, you know, thousands of people were killed and crushed, sweatshops didn't just emerge magically in Bangladesh. It was because of this planned, deliberate process of structural adjustment of special economic zones that made Bangladesh one of the epicenters for the sweatshop garment industry. And so now, you have this parallel process where sweatshops are in the special economic zones, often outside of large urban areas. And you simultaneously have the destruction of rural economies, rural again, you know, again, largely impacting Indigenous and peasant and coastal communities.
And so the only option that many rural communities have now is to migrate thousands by the day thousands it's estimated thousands of people move to talk every single day forced into you know, living in massive slums, Dhaka you know Dhaka is really got some, it's got the world's largest garment industry. It's got some of the world's largest slum communities. And it's also one of the countries that's, you know, going to be most impacted and is already impacted by the climate disaster, just all of these are converging. But not coincidentally, right. They're all connected to each other. And so thousands of people now migrate from rural communities to work in these toxic sweatshops every single day. And you know, then we end up with these kinds of disasters that I was just mentioning, like the Rana Plaza industrial disaster, where thousands of people were killed when that entire Plaza collapsed, collapsed into rubble of stone. And that was predicted right, there was already cracks in the wall. That building had failed safety inspections, but people were forced to work, women were forced to work in those sweatshops. And so you know, that's just one small example of the ways in which rural to urban migration is happening as a direct result of capitalist forces that are restructuring economies, you know, national and local economies to such a degree that people have no option, but to move to urban areas and are then forced to work in those same capitalist industries that forced them off their land in the first place. Right. That's the irony of the capitalist dream, right is to die or to work yourself to death.
Ayana Young In an interview for Room Magazine titled “On the Principles of DIY Activism”, you are quoted as saying “Neoliberalism is entrenched around the world, but at the same time there are parts of the world where neoliberalism hasn’t yet taken ahold. We see this in communities that continue to live on the land, that continue to live traditionally. India has a growing economy, but at the same time, forty percent of India continues to live in forests and in farming and peasant communities. In B.C., there is the Unis’tot’en clan. They are living on their land in the pathways of seven different pipelines. They are fighting the fossil fuel industry, they are fighting resource extraction, and they are also simultaneously in the midst of a cultural resurgence.” As we come to a close, I’d like to ask you about the importance of places that haven’t been poisoned by neoliberalism. So many of us remain thirsty for something that isn’t this, but we also believe that certain “isms” (capitalism, imperialism, colonialism) are irreversible...Can you speak to the truth that as we stretch our minds to think about a world without borders, surveillance, land degradation, or forced severances, that we actually open ourselves to the worlds that are already existing and have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to care and abundance for all?
Harsha Walia Yeah, I mean, that's such a great question, you know, because I think one of the things we struggle with the most is the sense of, you know, yes, I know, things are bad, but there's no other alternative, right, that sense of despair and apathy, which is real, right, it's really hard to stretch our imaginations. And that's why I think it's such a good and necessary political exercise, to be engaged in political imagination work.
And, you know, the one thing that's so important that I'll say, first, about the kind of structure particularly of capitalism is the entire structure of capitalism as an economic structure we know, but as a kind of political project, it needs us to believe in its inevitability, right? That was part of neoliberalism was this acronym called TINA, ‘there is no alternative’ in the 80s and 90s, when capitalism, you know, capitalism, of course, is older, but neoliberalism as its current form was taking root, Tina, was necessary for politicians and the elite to sell to us that there is no other alternative And so it's not a coincidence that we feel this despair, and apathy, or the sense of overwhelm about fighting the system, because it wants us to believe that. And I think in order to kind of fight that and to look to spaces, it is also important to remember that these systems are human made. Anything that humans have made, we can destroy. There are many other systems that we have destroyed. I mean, they still exist, but you know, feudalism, for example, is not the reigning political structure in the world today, capitalism is arguably feudalistic and nepotistic and all of that. But you know, we have, we have fought political power. And everyday people are fighting different forms of political power. And so it is important to realize that nothing is inevitable. The future is a process that we all make, I don't want to be overly you know, I don't want to be overly romantic about it, because it's not an easy fight. And of course, you know, the discrepancy of power and hierarchy and state violence and squashing of dissent is very real. But we do have to realize that this is an iterative process, that those are decisions that we make right to fight, we make a decision to fight, and also that there are many examples that we can turn to, you know, like Wet’suwet’en, that you mentioned, any many other, particularly Indigenous communities, right, so Indigenous communities are 5% of the world's population and steward 80% of the world's biodiversity and continue to practice Indigenous jurisdiction, continue to practice Indigenous laws, you know, and again, I think it's really important that we not fall into those kinds of racist tropes of Indigenous life as some kind of, you know, “primitive”, pre-colonial, these are people and cultures and communities and nations that are practicing and evolving their laws and their practices and jurisdictions and technologies all the time, and are not frozen in time in these kinds of, you know, racist anthropological kind of textbook ways.
And so there are so many examples of, you know, Indigenous communities in Brazil, in BC, where I live, really all around the world, of Indigenous communities fighting extraction, that are that are offering different worldviews of ways that we can live because those those ways of are still alive and well and being practiced. The Wet’suwet’en Nation, just to return back to that example, have successfully fought so many different pipelines and in that process are not only fighting the capitalism of the pipeline and fossil fuel industry, including liquefied natural gas are not only fighting the colonial Canadian state and the full armed violence of the state, so they have faced a number of militarized raids by the Canadian state, but also are doing it as they are affirming their laws and their practices. Right. So there's a healing lodge on the territory. There's a cultural center on the territory, you know, there's just daily practices of hunting and trapping, and permaculture and harvesting on the territory, cultural resurgence on the territory. So, you know, they're living A Wet’suwet’en way, it’s not just about fighting capitalism and colonialism, it's about doing that as an assertion of what so attend law and jurisdiction.
And so these examples, I think, are so important, because they remind us that there are other ways of living and being that there are other laws that we can follow that there is Indigenous jurisdiction that continues to be alive on all lands in North America, that that is not a figment of the past that these laws and law and are alive and these jurisdictions are still there. And that it's our responsibility, to seek them out to support them, to offer them our solidarity, and to affirm them, and to affirm them, right. So where I am in Vancouver, as it's colonially known, is actually the lands of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, and Skwxwú7mesh people, Wet’suwet’en lands that I was mentioning, that is Wet’suwet’en jurisdiction. There are many, many Indigenous nations and the lands that I live on, you know, the Tsleil-Waututh, Musqueam, and Skwxwú7mesh are still alive and practiced on these lands. So I think, you know, it's so important to look to these as examples all around us, wherever we are, there are likely Indigenous peoples in North America who are still practicing and living those laws, and it's our responsibility to seek them out and support them.
Ayana Young Well, Harsha, thank you so much for all of the care and attention you have given this conversation and the years of work that you have so tirelessly put into supporting this earth and their people.
Harsha Walia Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for your time.
Francesca Glaspell Thank you for listening to another episode of For The Wild Podcast. The music you heard today was by John Newton, Troll Dolly, and Harrison Bosch. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Francesca Glaspell, and Melanie Younger.