Border Stories

For some people, crossing international borders is an adventure, while for others it can be a matter of life and death. As poet Warsan Shire has written, “you have to understand / that no one puts their children on a boat / unless the water is safer than the land.” From crossing between empires to immigration policy to the dwindling number of safe harbors available to those seeking refuge, histories of boundaries and borders circumscribe our everyday lives in ways so ubiquitous that they often become hard to notice.

Photo: Scott Robinson/Flickr/CC BY 2.0. Image cropped.

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Perspectives on History November 2023 Cover.

Staff

L. Renato Grigoli, editor
Laura Ansley, senior managing editor
Lizzy Meggyesy, research and publications assistant
Alexandra F. Levy, communications manager
Liz Townsend, manager, data administration and integrity