Vox Borders Series Review – Akshaya

The Vox Borders series is a fascinating documentary created by Johnny Harris, which tells the stories of borders throughout the world. This series captures the importance of borders in varying forms, from the physical borders that we build, national borders that draw on maps and the social borders we create in our minds. Vox Borders highlights how significant and defining borders can be, and how the implications of their permeability and location and hugely affect the world. As I am impatiently awaiting the release of season two of the series, I will be reviewing the first season.

The series was launched with the release of ‘Divided Island: How Haiti and the DR became two worlds’; a video about the distinguishing border between these two greatly socio-economically contrasting countries. The video refers to the countries’ dissimilar colonial pasts, and how this impacted them to this day; this is captured by effective animation that keeps the video engaging. The video includes Harris himself experiencing a typical day at the market for the Haitian women, which emphasises the struggle and discrimination the Haitian people go through on a daily basis. The inclusion of videos of the local people makes the experiences Harris describes more authentic and humanises the situations.

This combination of Harris’ experiences in the place itself, animation and history, interviews of the locals and beautiful shots of the region, continues throughout the next five episodes of season one and make this series truly captivating. Episode two discusses the importance of drawing borders, and how the positioning of said borders can have huge implications; the episode is about how the melting of polar ice caps and the growing arctic ocean has created a necessity to draw borders here, and how Russia and other countries are attempting to make the most of this new opportunity for fossil fuels. Episode three moves on to borders within society and how differing beliefs and ideologies can divide people just as much as any physical barrier. It looks at North Korea’s bubble in Japan; a community of 150,000 North Koreans who were born and continue to reside in Japan, yet follow Korean traditions and, most strikingly, the ideology of Kim il-Sung. With tensions between Japan and North Korea being high, this community is incredibly separate from the rest of Japanese society, and reflects the barriers that everyday people can make.

Episode four moves on to the topic most people think of during the discussion of borders: migration. However, despite looking at the US-Mexican border, this video focuses on a more overlooked topic that is becoming increasing important. This is the increase in Central Americans migrating from countries such as El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, often as an attempt to escape micro wars due to gangs, and arriving at the USA. In order to prevent this migration, the USA enlisted the help of Mexico to stop Central Americans from reaching the border, and essentially do their dirty work. This video discusses migration policies and how these policies affect real people, as well as the problems with the system for granting asylum seekers refugee status. 

The absence of borders is the theme of episode five, where non-state areas, in regions such as the Himalayas, exist due to their extreme geography making it difficult to draw lines between areas. This episode highlights the concept of living without administrative borders, the benefits of borders, and how international trade, sharing of knowledge and globalisation impacts small isolated communities and their cultures. The final episode is similar to the fourth, and is titled ‘Europe’s most fortified border is in Africa’ and is about the pain and human loss that borders can cause. The border in question is the border between the Spanish autonomous city Melilla, on the north coast of Africa, and Morocco. Due to Melilla’s wealth, opportunities and status in the EU, the area is a greatly desirable place to migrate too, so much so that people are willing to risk their lives to do so. The episode talks in detail about the struggles these people endure in order to reach Melilla, the violence and racism that occurs at the border, as well as the push and pull factors of migration.

This series is incredibly interesting, well produced, comprehensive and engaging – 5/5