The Pages for Changes reading lists offer personalised and curated reading recommendations from key creatives, authors and thinkers.
Co-founder of Migrants in Culture, Joon-Lynn Goh curates a reading list of texts and resources about border abolition and for those looking for inspiration on how we move beyond our current systems.
As a migrant and cultural organiser, much of my current preoccupation is how we sustain a social movement that can dream and organise more boldly than the capitalists and fascists of our time. I co-founded and work within a migrant-led art and design studio for social movements called Migrants in Culture. Together we aim to grow a collective capacity to imagine and to live without borders.
The other night, I dreamt I was being rebuked by an old man. ‘No borders? Well this is just fantasy!’ he said. Really, I didn’t need to dream him to recognise how hard it is for the majority of the world to survive, let alone imagine beyond the status quo, which is what Border Abolition requires us to do: remove violent state practices such as prisons, detention centres and deportation, and instead cultivate ways of caring and organisation that makes bordering a redundant solution.
Unfortunately I woke up too soon to reply that we have imagined beyond the status quo before – with slavery, apartheid and restricted suffrage – and can do so again. So this is a reading list for anyone (including phantom man) looking for ways to get unstuck.
