In March of this year, a Vancouver-based alliance called Open the Borders! co-sponsored an international conference on immigration, borders and displacement of people. Among those involved with Open the Borders! is activist/theorist Nandita Sharma who was interviewed by Cynthia Wright. New Socialist offers here an excerpt from Wright's interview. A previous installment ran in the August-September 2002 issue of New Socialist. This excerpt focuses on the nature of nation-states and the dangers of nationalism. For more on Open the Borders! check out www.opentheborders.org

Wright: Your position is deeply opposed to nationalism, including left nationalism. Can you elaborate and talk about how this links to the question of immigration and immigrant rights?

Sharma: I believe it is absolutely essential to be anti-nationalist in the struggle for justice - not only for (im)migrants but also in the broader, anti-capitalist, social justice movement. European colonialism globalized the system of national states and, as I've argued elsewhere, this global system of national states is best seen as one of the first regulatory systems of global capitalism. National states not only provide the military backing necessary to the expansion and success of capitalist ventures, they also organize nationalized boundaries that contain people, most obviously perhaps in the nationalized character of labour markets.

National states have never existed in opposition to capitalists but have always helped to organize the terrain on which they operate. The idea, very popular in much of the 'anti-globalization' movement, that what we need to counter the power of corporations is a strengthened national sovereignty fails spectacularly to account for how that same 'sovereignty' is what destroyed communities of Indigenous peoples the world over and created highly exclusionary categories of membership based on ideas of 'race', gender and sexual orientation. I don't think that it is coincidental that the most ardently nationalist of movements are usually led by the elites of any given society (either Global North or South) that stand to benefit the most (or at least lose the least) in the formation of ever-newer nationalized territories with their states.

Part of the popular appeal of nationalism is its wrongful conflation with the idea of the local. We are often told that the 'nation' is our 'community', that the national state is our 'home' and that our nationality is our 'identity'. However, all these are imposed identities written in the destruction of the actually-local. People do not exist at a 'national' level but always-only at a local level. This is not a romanticization of 'local community', for these can also be quite hierarchical and exclusionary. It is, however, a complete rejection of the modernization paradigm and a call for self-determination and global connectivity amongst local communities.

National states have never, and never can, represent 'the people'. In fact, this idea of 'the people' is highly abstract and should be thrown out! The national state has historically only represented the most powerful in society. At the very best, national states have tried to appease the least powerful but only to maintain ultimate power over them. In particular, it is not merely coincidental but absolutely fundamental that national states will never provide justice for Indigenous peoples or (im)migrants. National states exists in profound opposition to the self-determination of Indigenous people foremost. They also work to consistently reproduce the 'foreigner' that the 'citizen' can easily be mobilized to oppose. Ironically, much of what the existing 'Left' has fought hard for, the welfare state programs of social provisions, has actually worked to strengthen nationalist notions that only those classified as 'citizens' are worthy of receiving healthcare, social assistance as so on. Far from creating the conditions for international solidarity, this has worked to create the support for reactionary, right-wing politics.

The aftermath of September 11th is a good case-in-point of how this operates. It is not at all surprising that the reactionary policies implemented post-9/11 have been centred on the notion of 'Homeland Security'. National states everywhere, be it Canada, the US, the European Union, Pakistan, India or Iraq, have mobilized 'their population' against 'foreigners'. The terrorist threat is always an 'import', the problem is always 'the outsider' to 'our' way of life. This works, ultimately, to reproduce the very power base of the elites and does nothing to ensure 'security' but instead creates greater terror and distress the world over.

I reject the call for a resurgent Left Nationalism (most recently articulated by Gord Laxer in Canada), because it does not - indeed cannot - deal with the practices of colonialism, racism, and imperialism that created the national state in the first place. How will a Left Nationalism respond to Indigenous peoples' struggle for self-determination and land? By making them citizens of Canada? This is a strategy long-rejected by Indigenous people. How will a Left Nationalism respond to the displacement of people, particularly in the Global South? By telling them to 'stay at home' and build their own 'strong state' through their own Left Nationalism? Sounds like a disguised anti-immigration discourse to me. What of the Indigenous peoples in these nationalized territories? What will a Left Nationalism do for (im)migrants? Will it continue to give the national state the power to determine membership in the nation and the power to determine who can move and under what conditions into the territory controlled by the state?

Can Indigenous people and people of colour in all seriousness be asked to trust the supposed good will and sound judgment of a resurgent Nationalist Left in Canada (largely male, largely white, largely middle-class) to have power over our lives and our movements? I think not. Can Indigenous people in the Global South, or women, or poor people, be convinced that their self-determination lies in the power of the national state? I think not!

Because a Left Nationalism cannot address the concerns of Indigenous people in particular and people who can easily be classified as 'outsiders' to the nation in general, I cannot support using it to legitimize the power of the state over our communities.

The usual next question is "if not the national state, then what?" My answer to this lies in the power of diversity - not the multicultural-sort of facile diversity promoted by the Canadian state but the actually-existing kind of diversity of nature and the people in it. We all need self-determinacy of the sort that recognizes our part in nature. The power of global capitalism, and its absolute reliance of racist patriarchies, lies in its overwhelmingly homogenizing character. The world over, we are constantly being made in the image of white, male heterosexuality.

We need to ensure that power lies in the Many over this One way of being. The first step in achieving this reality lies in our imaginations: our ability to imagine a world organized through actually self-determinate communities not ideological versions of this as represented by national states. This is going to take much dialogue and strategy to overcome the incredible legitimacy still given to national states. I think that right now in the world, there is no greater challenge to this legitimacy than by Indigenous peoples and by the No Borders movements. Both, very explicitly, challenge the authority of national states over people. Both are fundamentally anti-capitalist.

National states exists in profound opposition to the self-determination of Indigenous people foremost. They also work to consistently reproduce the 'foreigner' that the 'citizen' can easily be mobilized to oppose.