Conversation

1/ Tricky question: what is the opposite of a “border”? The typical fearful-right idea of a non-border is a vague fear of a massive flood of people, suggesting a dam-like containment of pressure. The idea of developing world “overpopulation” encourages this mental model.
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2/ This sort of human flooding does happen on occasion, but generally it takes an unbelievable kind of pressure. The India-Pakistan partition is an example. 5 million flooded in 1 direction, 6 million in the other, with 1 million dead.
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3/ But this sort of massive social disruption is rare. In practice borders are places where you disconnect from one social graph to connect to another. Usually via a social “bridge” like a migration “chain”.
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4/ Humans are far more social than we realize. Migration is not isolated atomized things flowing anarchically along a pressure gradient. It is more like a careful, minimal kind of making and breaking of bonds.
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5/ Even under extreme stress — climate, war, ethnic cleansing — humans try to move in ways that preserve as much social graph integrity as they can, and quickly create new graph connections to replace lost ones. It’s like osmosis or electrical charge conduction.
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