 In a tale as old as British socialism itself, migrants have been thrown under the bus by several segments of the left and the argument around no borders has been one of the first we've conceded on. Seriously, the right barely had to ask. But this will, as it always has, backfire in the long term. The argument around no borders is worth fighting for because firstly it's an argument we can win and secondly winning it is non-negotiable when it comes to building any kind of meaningful resistance to capitalism or even getting minor improvements in the conditions of the working class. Because the working class isn't white, it's multi-racial and this is especially true in Britain and it's in the experience of migration, especially undocumented migration, that race and borders come together to form one of capitalism's most exploitable groups. Now obviously there are some practical exceptions. If you're being colonised, for example, in the context of already existing nation-states the border might become a strategic node of self-defense. This is a very historically specific contingent context and it's one that Britain never has and obviously will never face. But there are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to why the no borders argument has to be at the core of our politics. So firstly it's obviously not just about opening all the borders tomorrow as much as that would be nice. Rather it's about denaturalising the border. It's about taking this thing that seems like such a natural part of how the world is organised and exposing the fact that it's been historically and ideologically produced. Basically borders are a strategic way of sustaining and generating inequality across racial and geographic lines. It creates sort of multiple geopolitical hierarchies that exist both internally, so between national elites and the national society, and obviously between nation-states. So it's not some kind of eternal irreversible truth. It's more a way of ensuring that a particular global distribution of resources and power is maintained. This is why we've seen examples of open borders in recent history. The 1948 British Nationality Act opened the British border to all citizens of the Commonwealth. Of course this was later repealed in a way that specifically benefited those from white Commonwealth countries. And obviously no borders does currently exist for the rich. So really borders are an issue of class as much as they are a race. And borders dividing working classes of different nations are a nifty little trick that capitalists use to make it seem like our interests are world apart. The idea that no borders is somehow a neoliberal dream is also a total myth, peddled by those who want to take what feels like an easier route to electability. Global capital obviously isn't interested in actual freedom of movement for all. It's interested in movement on its terms. It wants to be able to make use of some migrants as workers, particularly those who are young, single, cheap, for whom the threat of deportation or loss of status can make them theoretically more compliant workers. Then when we're done with them just send them back. And even better while they're here don't let them use any of our tax funded public services for free. That creation of multi-tier citizenship is basically the sweet spot for big business because it allows certain segments of the workforce to be more easily exploited. So while the tightening of the border and the destruction of migrants' rights doesn't really decrease migration, it does lower the working conditions for everyone even further. So what we're currently seeing, which is the intensification of neoliberalism and anti-migrant policy is not a contradiction at all. So open borders definitely not a neoliberal fantasy absolutely doesn't drive down wages. In fact it's pretty much the exact opposite. Thirdly and finally there's no such thing as a nice border. Often people will try and get around the difficulty of fighting for no borders by saying that what we need is just the more humane one. But borders are always essentially a value judgment on human life. It's a way of saying that because of who you are, you are or are not allowed to make decisions about the conditions that you live in and the resources that you can access. And people are always going to resist this because so long as we live in a world where power and resources are unequally distributed through and alongside nation-states people will migrate and what makes the border a border is its policing and that's always going to involve forced deportations tearing families apart and some form of detention. So if you're going to ideologically back a border understand that this necessarily involves backing its often violent policing. So really no borders is not just about the physical border it's also about the imagined border. It's about that thing that makes it impossible to imagine a world where the distribution of resources is based on values like justice and equality rather than where you happen to be born or the body you happen to be born into. People have internalized a particular story of the border as a non-negotiable truth not because people are just inherently racist but because it rests on an ideology that is literally centuries in the making and it permeates every part of social life. And denaturalizing this isn't going to happen overnight or the result of just slick party messaging. It's going to require education and movement building at multiple levels from community organizing to political leaders that are consistently and I mean consistently honest with people about what function the border serves. This isn't just about nice or rhetoric it's about actually changing the terms on which people understand the world around them. In fact this idea that we could just defeat anti-migrant racism by making it politically incorrect to express it in public was a huge mistake and it's one that many of us internalized. The kind of movement building and consciousness raising that could actually make borders obsolete is a long-term project and one that isn't always going to feel like a safe space and is a burden that our documented and white comrades are probably going to have to shoulder a lot of. It's also a struggle that is obviously intimately tied to other things we might be involved in like economic justice, anti-colonialism and climate justice. So too often the British left thinks of migrants rights as an extra, as the kind of icing on the cake. But if the cake is socialist utopia then no borders is the heat. Take it away and you're left with a stoppy white mess that can barely hold itself together.