“Regardless of what the law, media and politicians dictate, people existing under the weight of colonialism’s legacy of race and racism have every right to come to Britain and take back what’s theirs”. Front flap of (B)ordering Britain by Nadine El-Enany.
The carving up of the world into separate nation states is now taken for granted and the national is assumed to be the container of social, political and economic processes. The national has become naturalised. In social science the naturalisation of the nation state has been labelled ‘methodological nationalism’. For migration researchers, methodological nationalism is a particularly vexing epistemological, empirical and ethical challenge. It normalises controls over cross border mobility and positions the international migrant as transgressing naturalised territorial boundaries. But national borders are not natural and national bordering demands control over mobilities of native and alien, plants, animals, and people alike. National borders are naturalised even though ecosystems stretch them. Territories require considerable effort to maintain: ‘Let all know how empty and worthless is the power of kings’, as Canute said, faced with the ineluctable tide. He then is recorded as taking off his crown and refusing to ever wear it again.
Like humans, all plants and plant products imported to England and Wales, whether or not they are construed as ‘native’, are subject to identity checks at border control posts and plant health passports are required for in-country movement. Plant choices in our plot were shaped by COVID-19 but also by Brexit as EU plant passports were no longer valid and nurseries were faced with a shortage of workers as EU citizens left. The ‘national order of things’ shapes our plots in multiple ways: who maintains our plot, who visits it and what is planted.
How is methodological nationalism manifest in the life sciences? How do we unwittingly territorialise and nationalise ecosystems? How can attention to multiple mobilities help us de-nationalise and re-wild our ecological thinking?
Meditation Three: readings
- Anderson, B. (2019) ‘New Directions in Migration Studies: towards methodological de-nationalism’ Comparative Migration Studies 7, 36 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-019-0140-8.
- El-Enany, N. (2020) Bordering Britain: law, race and empire. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- Lundberg, J., Moberg, F. (2003) ‘Mobile Link Organisms and Ecosystem Functioning: Implications for Ecosystem Resilience and Management’ Ecosystems 6, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-002-0150-4
- Ticktin, M. ‘No Borders in the time of COVID-19’ American Anthropologist July 2 https://www.americananthropologist.org/online-content/no-borders-in-the-time-of-covid-19
- Tsing, A. (2012) “Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species.” Environmental Humanities 1: 141–54.