By: Samantha Beekman
As an American studying in Germany and currently on exchange in Egypt, I am no stranger to privilege in the face of borders. The American passport is consistently ranked as one of the most powerful passports in the world, with 186 visa-free destination countries.
Though student visas are one of the most easily accessible routes for migrants seeking to go abroad, there is an added layer of privilege for those living, studying, and working in the Schengen Zone, which aspires to a configuration that allows for the free movement of capital, goods, services, and people. As an international student in Germany, there are visa-related constraints and requirements, including a cap on working hours, proof of access to certain financial resources, the type of academic program that qualifies for a student visa, the requirement for a certain standard of health insurance, language requirements and more. Still, living in a Schengen country comes with huge benefits for those who can afford to bear the costs, including freedom of movement among core European countries which are some of the richest in the world. Similarly, moving to Egypt for an exchange semester is couched in privilege coming from this background, from a visa on arrival to relatively easy access to U.S. dollars (unimpacted by Egyptian currency fluctuations) to certain access to spaces and classes here in Cairo that are more accessible to privileged, white, western foreigners than to other groups, particularly other migrant groups with fewer resources and/or those facing greater discrimination.
At the same time, the spaces chosen to enter and the borders chosen or not chosen to traverse can reinforce this privilege. For example, studying at the American University in Cairo, which former AUC President Francis J Ricciardone called “the most expensive university in Egypt by far,” already raises barriers to entry for large swaths of the population. Compounding these barriers with other, more physical ones, including the literal wall and security system in place around the perimeter of the campus, it is easy to conceive of life here as one bordered off from other communities even within other areas of Cairo. With the main campus located in New Cairo, dubbed the “city of the rich,” and many students and faculty residing either there behind the walls, around the city in other gated communities and compounds, or within the bubbles of expats in the richest neighborhoods across the city, it is difficult for me not to reflect on these borders that we choose to interact with and immerse ourselves in.
If you did not want to, you would hardly have to escape from behind these walls as a privileged international student in Cairo. Taking a private car via Uber directly from your closed-off doorstep to your classes located on a campus that feels like a five-star resort can be a form of erecting walls of your own choosing. It is hardly necessary to interact with local Egyptians or confront realities of life for most residents in Cairo beyond this bubble that immerses one among the most privileged class of students in the nation. While locals are permitted to traverse the university’s walls as students and faculty, others can only enter if they are afforded the opportunity as a form of local “labor migrants” entering as groundskeepers, service workers, maintenance, security, sanitation, and janitorial workers, among the other professions it takes to keep campus running as a small city within the closed-off walls. The university estimates it could cost students up to $33,170 per year to attend the university as a local undergraduate student, or almost ten times the average annual salary in Egypt. Putting up these walls – either physically in the case of the border around AUC’s campus or routinely through the spaces we selectively traverse as AUC students – reinforces the privilege we are immersed in and the sense of differentiation that borders are best at deriving.
Borders not only physically categorize, sort, and filter the people who traverse them – into allowed and unallowed, student and laborer, rich and poor – but also create realities in and of themselves and “place people in new types of power relations with others.” In their editorial, “Why No Borders?”, Bridget Anderson, Nandita Sharma, and Cynthia Wright assert that borders “are the mark of a particular kind of relationship, one based on deep divisions and inequalities between people who are given varying national statuses.” I want to extend this idea to say that it is not just varying national statuses that can be the determinant of division and inequality marked by borders, but also these everyday territorialized spaces that range from university campuses to increasingly gentrified neighborhoods. These boundaries separating whole classes of people reinforce ideas, narratives, and norms of the “other” in the same vein even of a national border. What is considered safe and unsafe, what spaces are considered acceptable vs. unacceptable, where is considered desirable contrasted with what, where, and who is characterized as undesirable are ways in which we put up borders between nations, classes, and groups alike. In these less formalized borders, we impose our own borders which serve to filter. Lower classes and undesirable groups are permitted to cross these borders to work and to serve, but they are not welcome to stay. The poor and poorly-paid can traverse these boundaries for a certain time on certain terms as gardeners, as janitors, as baristas, as waiters, as waste managers, but are not welcome to stay and enjoy the fruits of their own labor, or often are not compensated well enough to afford to stay. Gated communities and universities, private parks, and gentrified cafes all serve as these territorialized spaces.
It is important, particularly as a privileged international student at AUC who automatically falls into the upper echelons of the society in which I enter and inhabit, to consider exactly the privileges I carry as I cross these borders externally and within my new home for the next several months. Being aware of these highly divisive, differentiating barriers that I am constantly faced with choosing to or not to cross – and taking into account the relationships and power dynamics at play as I am categorized by them – is of the utmost importance. That I am not faced with confronting these dynamics but for intentional and critical introspection is yet another manifestation of this privilege.
Author’s Bio:
Samantha Beekman is a Master of Public Policy candidate at the Hertie School in Berlin, Germany, studying at the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies at the American University in Cairo during the fall 2023 semester. As a professional building on six years of experience in climate, migration and gender, she aims to participate in meaningful projects, facilitate inclusive partnerships, conduct localized research and communicate complexities effectively to positively disrupt the status quo and facilitate positive social and environmental impacts.
References
- Latest Publications: Salah Jawish and Elena Habersky: A Lesson in Creating Community for Educational Rights in Cairo, Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration, Volume 11/2, 2024
- Elena Habersky, Amira Hetaba-Sabry, and Claire McNally, On Idle Possibilities and Missed Chances: Refugee Rights in Egypt. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 2023.
- Out soon: Gerda Heck, Eda Sevinin, Elena Habersky, and Carlos Sandoval Garcia, “Making Routes. Mobility and politics of migration in the global South,“AUC Press Cairo
