Introduction

The AU has systematically drawn down its forces in Somalia, which is an indication they cannot be there forever. The increasing number of conservative right-wing leaders in the west and schisms such as Brexit does not bode well for the AU's long-term presence in Somalia. So what has to be done for long-term stability in Somalia should be done now. There is a lot to learn from the country's autonomous northern regions considering that Somalis are one people, with one language, one dominant religion (Sunni Islam) and shared cultural experience. It is logical therefore to argue that what works for the regions of the north will work for the regions of the south. The stability achieved during the short-lived ingenious administration of the ICU strongly supports this view. All that was needed was to make this indigenous approach more enduring through international support. Systems of government are more effective when they evolve from the experience of the people they are meant to serve.

While southern and central Somalia still remain conflict-ridden, the northern part of the country devoid of AU occupation has long since experienced some semblance of stability. The autonomous regions of the north devolved a system of governance unique to their experience and being spared external interference, these regions have been fairly stable. This decent example shows the workability of indigenous governance in Africa and an independent AU should have invested its resources into encouraging such indigenous political models all over Somalia rather than disrupt them at the insistence of its benefactors.

In the northwest and northeast of Somalia, the collapse of the central government did not precipitate the kind of warfare and plunder that initially devastated the south. For a variety of reasons, such as greater political cohesion among clans, local ownership, more support from businessmen to support the peace, effective political leadership and innovation rooted in tradition, these areas spared themselves intense violence. The self-declared state of Somaliland gradually began to build modes of capacity to govern, and a national assembly of traditional clan elders helped to manage the peace and keep young gunmen under control. In Puntland in the north-east, chronic inter-clan tensions were contained by traditional elders as well.

Borders and border crossings are perennial challenges for self, society, and the world. Situated in a world where questions of citizenship and cosmopolitanism loom large, border crossers critically interrogate who is a citizen and who belongs to a larger planetary history. Many of the chapters that follow touch on these questions. Two of the first forms of border crossing, religion, and commerce, dominate much of the history of humanity into the twenty-first century. Globalization is not new, as William H. McNeill and others have pointed out, and the anticipations of the crossings of trade, conquest, conversion, and colonialism have meant that borders have always had a provocative position in human history.

But something unique is now happening and needs to be reported. The speed with which border crossing is taking place today would simply be unimaginable to humans of earlier eras, not least the electronic border crossing taking place every day for most of the world's population. This book is an attempt to cover at least some of this territory. We begin this dialogue on the new art of border crossing by noting the myriad forms of border crossings and their intersections with questions of mobility, refugees, persecution, and identity politics. Violence and state and substate conflict, especially in Ukraine, Palestine, and the Congo, have deeply problematized the questions of borders and control. These topics on a planetary scale require our attention, and at least some of them show up in the chapters that follow, our effort at a transdisciplinary collection of essays from around the globe. Chapter 1 of the book by Ananta Kumar Giri presents these challenges and Chapter 2 by David Blake Willis provides the latest theoretical discourses concerning border crossing and border crossers.

Subaltern: A Site of Border Invasion

In line with the Post-Marxian tradition, in a revolutionary approach to the same at the hands of Antonio Gramsci has a theme of a possible border crossing. The Subaltern, a social class is seen as a locus of border invasion in this section of the chapter. The invasion here is in a psychological sense where the mental makeup of the members is tried to be influenced through their own ‘objects of interest’. I shall return to these means or objects, later in the chapter. The notion of the subaltern was first used by the Italian political activist, Antonio Gramsci in his article ‘Notes on Italian History’ which appeared posthumously in his most widely known book, Prison Notebooks written between 1929 and 1935. Gramsci's standpoint is that the section of society who are termed as oppressed are not actually are given the right to determine their own history or even to participate in legislations of what is to determine their future. The understanding of the origin of the notion of the subaltern is not also theoretical rather needs some experiential wisdom from having lived in the midst of such groups. They tend to detach themselves from the mechanistic and economistic aspects of societal life as psychologically there is a large amount of discrimination that they have been subjected to.

The term ‘subaltern class’ is used to refer to any low-rank person or group of people in a particular society who are under the control or direction of another dominant group.They are suffering under the hegemonic domination of a ruling elite class that denies them the basic right to participate in the making of local history and culture. They in actuality are active individuals of the same nation. Gramsci's intentions when he first used the concept of the subaltern are clear enough to be given any other far-fetched interpretations. The only groups Gramsci had in mind at that time were the workers and peasants who were oppressed and discriminated against by the leader of the National Fascist Party of Benito Mussolini. Gramsci took an interest in the study of the consciousness of the subaltern class as one possible way to make their voice heard instead of relying on the historical narrative of the state.

My first encounter with Somalis was in the early 1990s. What struck me was their hospitality, they were quick to smile and to lend a helping hand should one need it. Somali warmth was indeed legendary. Despite being a stranger in the midst, I was invited as an honoured wedding guest and shared meals with families I was just introduced to. I was appalled, then, when the country descended into a bloody civil war. For the past forty years, South-Central Somalia has been engulfed in violence between clans, an Islamist insurrection in the form of Al-Shabaab and the Machiavellian antics of political elites in Mogadishu whose sole purpose was to ensure that they were as closely positioned to the feeding trough of a failed state.

This spiral to hell and mayhem continued apace whilst the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) kept having its mandate extended. This raises the important question as to why Somalia's northern regions of Puntland and Somaliland have remained relatively unscathed by the violence. It is here where Jude Cocodia in the book goes against the grain of mainstream scholarship on Somalia. Courageously and innovatively, he has provided an alternative explanation to the Somali imbroglio. Erudite and fearlessly, Cocodia notes how both Puntland and Somaliland have made use of indigenous modes of conflict resolution and governance. As these were not deemed alien to their peoples’ values, they resonated with them and allowed them to create relatively stable polities. In the process, both Puntland and Somaliland have challenged the Eurocentric underpinnings of state formation contained in the Westphalian order.

State formation in southern Somalia, sadly did not go this route. Indeed, following the ouster of the dictatorship of Siad Barre, there emerged the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). As practically all Somalis are Muslim, the ICU was formed to prevent inter and intra-clan conflict through Islamic principles. However, Ethiopia, the seat of the African Union, did not want this to occur. Addis Ababa, already occupied a large portion of Somalia, the Ogaden and a united Somalia may well press claims for the return of Ogaden. So, Ethiopia had a vested interest in not seeing a stable and strong Somalia.

A traveler, unlike the tourist, goes beyond the confines of boundaries. These boundaries can be actual or metaphorical, or more or less man-made constructs— some geopolitical, some social, and some psychological. Hence, the very act of traveling or crossing borders and traversing boundaries is often related to meaningmaking. It becomes a site where multiple semantic possibilities are produced, giving access to various ways of thinking and interpretation. The idea of crossing boundaries and borders, for that matter, can have several inferences—from visiting, learning to relocating to challenging its stifling and limiting sociopolitical agendas and agencies. As Culbert (2019: 346) puts it, travel reflects “both powerful vested interests and myriad alternative possibilities of resistance and contestation.” Social scientists and geographers (cultural and political) are of the view that borders since they also create differences, are more like processes because they help us to understand how the differences, thus created, are established and renegotiated. In his essay, “Boundaries, Inequalities, and Legitimacies: A Conceptual Framework for Border Studies Collaboration,” Bernd Bucher (2018: 12) sees, “borders and boundaries as a process, rather than as any kind of static entities, they are never ontologically implicated, that is, they do not begin by merely ‘existing’ as entities, rather, they are continuously drawn and redrawn: in a constant state of becoming over time, they in fact precede nation states.” Andrew Abbott (2001: 263) further elaborates this idea by pertinently commenting, “These points us towards boundaries and borders as processes (rather than stable and natural things) that constitute and relate ‘things’ as functions of their performance: ‘Social entities […] come into existence when social actors tie social boundaries together in certain ways. Boundaries come first, then entities’.” It will be useful, at this juncture, to first understand the difference between the two terms,

Introduction

Two political borders are remarkably significant for the history of nonviolent resistance:

• 1. The border between Mexico and the USA, which shifted by annexations and wars, resulting in the expansion of the exploitation system of slavery to the newly conquered territories. Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) opposed slavery and war: by public speeches and civil disobedience through tax resistance.

• 2. The border between Natal and Transvaal in South Africa, which Indian nonviolent resisters crossed as an act of civil disobedience during the Epic March in November 1913, organized by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948) and Hermann Kallenbach (1871–1945), the owner of Tolstoy Farm (1910–1913).

Both Thoreau and Gandhi, contributed to the emancipation struggle against slavery and war by example: Thoreau's resistance was individual civil disobedience, and Gandhi's border crossing was a collective act of defiance against degrading and oppressive legislation—after he had introduced the notion Satyagraha in the year 1908, emphasizing not only “firmness in Truth” (satyāgraha), but awareness, heart and spirit: courage, equanimity, fearlessness, humility, persistence, righteousness—soul-force. Or in the words of American abolitionist, friend of the New England Transcendentalists, and poet James Russell Lowell (1819–1891):

We comprehend the transcending of borders as an overarching motto for all those who strove for the abolition of slavery, aimed at establishing cooperative settlements to find alternatives to private property, and denounced racist discrimination, human rights violations, violence, and war. Thus, we demonstrate that the evolution of nonviolent resistance itself is deeply entrenched within the history of human emancipation and pacifist ethics—from the American abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879), Adin Ballou (1803–1890), and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) to the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910).

The Age of the Coronavirus unleashed a new normal on the world in 2020–2023. Within the borders imposed by the disease and its variants, we witnessed locked-down humans, massive casualties, and clearer evidence of natural habitat destruction. Rapidly moving to center stage at the same time in the consciousness of sophisticated planners, whether civilian, governmental, or military, are an array of clear environmental threats that cross borders. Complex, destructive, and extractive global networks highlight the disregard and depredations of humans toward the environment and have resulted in catastrophic losses along and within borders political, ecological, and social.

“The pandemic is a portal” as Arundhati Roy has shared with us (2020), and portals are the borderlands of emergent new worlds. What we had previously thought of as a world headed inexorably toward globalization, borderlessness, and a “habitus of homogeneity” (Befu, 2001) is once again disrupted by innovation and newness as intrusions, extractions, and catastrophes challenge and pressure us for transformation. Debordering is taking place in some places and rebordering in others, particularly when invasions and war dominate the headlines.

More importantly for the long run, climate-induced catastrophes are now very real, appearing literally at our doorsteps every day, crossing borders with impunity. Nearly every indicator of climate change that was predicted appears to have been deeply underestimated. The consequences of not planning and not acting when faced with these “wicked problems” are simply unfathomable (Satterwhite, Miller, & Sheridan, 2015). The historical roots and routes of what has happened are deeply intertwined with who we are in the world and how we cross these borders: metaphoric, symbolic, literal, and spiritual.

What we discover, especially now as the Coronavirus has upended many traditional notions of structure and agency around borders, is a reimagining of the human condition that extends to the rest of our environment. We thus face a stark, existential question at the borderlands of our survival: Can societies encourage sufficient changes in human lifestyles to avert ecological collapse?

The crossing or even overcoming of state borders does not depend solely on the efforts of affected individuals or groups. Borders are, as the history of Europe shows, established by institutions such as the state and can also be dismantled through intergovernmental cooperation. Both presuppose that people have something in common within the respective borders and also across borders. If this is not the case, states can dissolve, on the one hand, because their populations cannot be held together even under the greatest duress. Examples of this are historical nationality states such as Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, or the Soviet Union or many present-day African states with their fluid borders. On the other hand, traditional state borders can be made more permeable or almost invisible, as is the case with many borders in Western Europe today. However, this in turn presupposes that the respective populations can see advantages in this or are able to build on the same values, cultures, belief systems, etc. on both sides of the borders. Where this is not the case, border crossings that involve more than classic push and pull effects such as labor migration or trade are not easy to manage.

In this respect, the article deals with the difficult attempt to make borders more permeable and to systematically establish transnational cooperation in an area characterized by strong segmentation. For in Southeast Asia, culture, language, economy, and society differ dramatically from country to country, indeed from population group to population group. The article presents this problem, first characterizes the situation in Southeast Asia as a whole and then focuses its attention on the Greater Mekong Subregion. The contribution is based on the results of a scientific congress in 2018 and a recent publication by the author.

I. The Concept of South East Asia and the Diversity of the Area

Let us start with a geographical definition of the region of Southeast Asia which is a part of the Asian continent and includes the countries located east of India and south of China. In the first millennium, the entire region was subject to strong influence from India; this has been largely replaced by a Chinese one since the eighteenth century at the latest. Individual states, such as Vietnam, Thailand, today's Malaysia, and especially Singapore, are strongly sinicized.

Life is a journey with and beyond borders. Ideas germinate and travel with and beyond space and time and become part of a symphony of thinking. In November 2009, one of us, Ananta Kumar Giri, took part in a seminar on “The Politics of Boundary Maintenance,” organized at the Indian Institute of Advanced Shimla where he presented a paper on “Towards a New Art of Border Crossing.” He shared this as an opening invitation to interested friends to think with ideas in this paper further and now we have this humble gift with us, Toward a New Art of Border Crossing, to present the world as our Holi gift, a gift of colors, love, and light.

But the world has also much darkness and those who dare to challenge structures of oppression and control are cruelly treated and eliminated. We dedicate this volume to the living courage and creativity of Alexei Navalny, Fr. Stan Swamy and G.N. Saibaba. Alexei Navalny fought with courage, love, and life affirmative humor authoritarianism, corruption, and warmongering in Russia and paid this with his life in an arctic penal colony in Russia which for many is a state-sponsored murder.

Fr. Stan Swamy fought for the rights and dignity of Adivasis of India and was implicated in a sprawling case called Bhima Koregaon which many believed is a case of politically motivated arrest, and even as an 84-year-old prisoner was not given basic needed instruments such as a spoon. He collapsed in a courtroom in Mumbai on July 5, 2021. G.N Saibaba developed polio at a young age and as a result, lost his ability to walk. He had to crawl. With all the challenges of life, he got a PhD in English and taught at Ram Lal Anand College, New Delhi. He was picked up for his alleged association with the Naxalites and was imprisoned and subjected to inhuman treatment.

Introduction

In forestalling existing and potential suffering of regressive otherness in the host society, migrant and refugee parent generations often pursue dualistic linear transnational adaptations. They create sociocultural and political spaces under conditions of simultaneous linkages with countries of origin while simultaneously adapting to host societies. Parent generation also combines such endeavors with the task of caring for families. Struggling with such demanding challenges, the parent generations foster and raise the second and third generations—with the expectation of continuity. The youth, however, pursue favorable strategies and connections. While, for instance, witnessing the parent generation in overcoming otherness by sustaining host-homeland community associations, often resting on vanguard charismatic community members with traditional capabilities, the younger generation seeks alternative multi-linear and complex non-traditional adaptations. Though partially adapting aspects of the parent generation's social and cultural upbringing, the youth combine with educational and other sociocultural socialization impulses, mainly from the mainstream society. This makes the youth prefer alternative situational dynamic hybridity. They position themselves as engaging in multiple transformative and transferable fields- often aiming beyond host–homeland connections and community formations. Despite such aspirations, even with the younger generations, challenges regarding otherness persist. Though emerging creative platforms transitionally empower the youth, the shift creates gaps between the youth and parent generations.

Transnational communities generate multiple transformative processes enabling communities to confront prevailing stigma and exclusive otherness. Through diverse activities, members succeed in forming alternative social and political platforms thereby promoting cooperation and solidarities within the community as well as in relation to associated civic networks. Internally, communities remain diverse and heterogeneous resulting in disagreements on vision, ideas, and practical activities and priorities. Externally, communities confront networks and constituents opposing the presence of inhabitants with migrant and refugee backgrounds.

The younger generations differ both from the parent generations and from the wider society. With access to specific community platforms as well as engaging in diverse interactions with the wider society, younger generations navigate through conventions, traditions, and conflicting priorities. In maintaining a respectful position in society, the youth, therefore, assemble resources balancing the past with the present while remaining open for potentialities.