ava shannon

From the final chapter of Spaces of Hope, “The insurgent architect at work” by David Harvey (2000):

9. The right to the production of space
The ability of individuals and collectivities to ‘vote with their feet’ and perpetually seek the fulfillments of their needs and desires elsewhere is probably the most radical of all proposals. Yet without it there is nothing to stop the relative incarceration of captive populations within particular territories. If, for example, labor had the same right of mobility as capital, if political persecution could be resisted (as the affluent and privileged have proven) by geographical movement, and if individuals and collectivities had the right to change their locations at will, then the kind of world we live in would change dramatically (this principle is stated in Article 14 of the UN Declaration). But the production of space means more than merely the ability to circulate within a pre-ordained spatially structured world. It also means the right to reconstruct spatial relations (territorial forms, communicative capacities, and rules) in ways that turn space from an absolute framework of action into a more malleable relative and relational aspect of social life.

While various rights are readily advocated by any average leftist, and many more by any average conservative, and all of these contribute to the responsibilities of states to take care of the people within them while also keeping a respectful distance, one right, one that seems so basic as to be overlooked or even taken for granted, remains undeclared: The right to leave.
This is vital. States succeed and states fail and every one of them is really just an experiment (in despotism or democracy), and the freedom to leave a failed experiment in order to try a new one is actually fundamental to the continuing development of human politics. We can see how difficult – I hesitate to say impossible – it is to change political structures once they are established. For dissidents or dreamers, leaving a given structure behind often remains the only possible way to express dissatisfaction (let alone outrage) with a particular system of governance. Take a political science or political philosophy course and you will realize how difficult it is to claim the righteousness of one political structure over another; it’s why every country in the world has a unique system of governance, and why governments that sometimes even seem bizarre to one culture actually function reasonably well in another. People need to be free to form the kind of government that they believe to be fair and effective; one state imposing its political structure on another state is itself a form of colonization and homogenization of political culture. This is why on the international scale what is supposedly practiced is a kind of libertarianism, where states decline to get involved in each other’s affairs so long as they don’t concern them (usually economically).
Now, any rational person will stop me here and say, But not all governments are created equal. This is why states do gather together to define a set of rules that can be imposed, inalienable human rights that are so important that no matter what else is going on, it is agreed that everyone should have them. Maintaining – and yes, enforcing – this set of rights is absolutely vital to maintaining (well, at least establishing) the freedoms and responsibilities all humans should have. But so long as these are kept, why should it concern me that somewhere else, all property is held by the state, or no one is allowed to have more than one child, or everyone must fight two years in the military, or the democratically-elected government is subject to a hereditary monarch (or, being taxpayers and having only one monopolistic insurance agency, everyone must pitch in to repay someone’s $110 million goof-up)?
You may feel somewhat uncomfortable with these propositions, and that is perfectly fair. The question is whether these laws, which do not violate basic human rights but do impose deeply upon one’s freedoms, should be inescapable.
I was born in a country. Everyone is. (Except the very few number of people whose countries get changed within their lifetimes, rendering them “stateless”.) We don’t have a choice about what country we are born into. But from the moment we are born, we are literally subjects of that country’s government, often inescapably so. Sure, wealthy and well-educated people might get to change citizenships, but they’re a pretty small minority, and even then they are not allowed to renounce their citizenship but must “get traded” – switch sides to some other allegiance.
So, what if you don’t have the means to move, or – more interesting – what if no political structure out there (that will take you) is operated under what you believe to be a just and fulfilling politics? Why shouldn’t such a person, perhaps someone who has been oppressed, exploited or abandoned by their state, go find some little corner of the world and start something new? That was exactly what happened when religious and political outcasts risked a dangerous transoceanic journey and laboured for a lifetime to establish something new – in the Americas. It has also happened for millennia wherever people mustered courage and resources to escape political regimes to make a new way for themselves in unclaimed lands. It is a relatively recent phenomenon that all habitable land (and even most of what is uninhabitable) has been parsed between competing global dominators and the upstart nations that resist them. Italy, of all places, was a rough collection of states until 1861! Perhaps in “failing” to colonize the entire world, the biggest nations of the earth did succeed in something that benefitted them: forcing every state to form clear and unmovable boundaries, lines that they intended to use to establish their territories but which effectively trapped their citizens within.

The inability to “leave” is a gag on political freedom to the utmost degree. It prevents people from living according to their political convictions, trying out new and very potentially more just structures of governance, perhaps the next millennia’s “birthplace of democracy” as I have heard people refer to the USA.
It also prevents people from communicating effectively to their states when they fail in a fundamental, systemic way. Just as “voting with your dollars” is meaningless if there is no worthy purchase, we cannot “vote with our feet” when there is nowhere to go.