Ep 18: No Borders & A decolonization worth fighting for. With Nandita Sharma (English).

De Verbranders

Our guest today is Nandita Sharma. Nandita is a professor of sociology at the University of Hawaii and an active member of several social movements, including the No Borders movement and movements struggling for the planetary commons. In our conversation today, we talk about Nandita's recent book Home Rule: National sovereignty and the separation of natives and migrants (2020). In this book, she profoundly questions the idea that humanity can be divided up into nations, and that each nation can claim a particular place on this earth and demarcate it as theirs. As countless historical and contemporary examples show, Nandita explains, such claims can always be mobilized against other people who are seen not to be native, and who therefore can have their rights removed, be excluded, expelled or even exterminated. We also talk about the hardening of nationalisms across the political spectrum and the need to organize for a world that is profoundly about non-exclusion. As climate catastrophe intensifies, people are going to be moving for their lives at a scale that is unprecedented. How are we going to transform the way that we respond to such movements, so that we don’t simply accept mass death at the world’s borders? As Nandita argues, it truly is a matter of survival that we learn to imagine ourselves as a political community on a planetary level. The dismantling of borders, Nandita argues, is an essential step in our struggle toward a decolonization worth fighting for. Graphic design by Thomas from Dark Roast (www.instagram.com/thomas.darkroast) Theme music: David (guitar) and Joris (drums) Theme music: Allen (accordion) and Neske (violin), after Doina from the Fanfare Ciocarlia