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Not only has Professor Sinéad Moynihan not appeared in Hollyoaks, but she has also not appeared in Drop Dead Gorgeous or How Not to Live Your Life.

Find out more about the Partition of Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement, the Common Travel Area, and Ireland’s 2004 Citizenship referendum. Stephen O’Neill’s book is Irish Culture and Partition, 1920-1955. You can read about US Immigration pre-clearance here: Gillian notes that, much later than 1903, she travelled from Victoria BC to Washington state via pre-clearance.

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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For the benefit of Frankie the Flat Coated Retriever and her fans, we’re not saying that she will always come second behind her older Labrador sister, but we’re not not saying that, either.

The Guardian article we refer to about the Poland-Belarus border is Jon Henley’s “‘People treated like weapons’: more deaths feared at Poland-Belarus border” (2021).

We quote from Susan Kouguell’s interview with Agnieszka Holland (2024) from the Script website.

For more on Polish politicians likening Green Border to Nazi propaganda, see Philip Oltermann’s Guardian piece (2023).

For an image of Mexico-US border at San Diego/Tijuana, see this CNN article (2021). We’ve talked about this particular site before, in Episode 1.6 on Border Art, when we discussed Javier Tellez’s One Flew over the Void (Bala Perdida) from 2005. You can watch it here.

You can find Georgia Cole’s piece “Shabana Mahmood is wrong: refugee status was never ‘permanent from day one’” on the Conversation website.

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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RIP Moira Rose, also sometimes known as the great Catherine O'Hara.

We refer to April Carter's The Political Theory of Global Citizenship; James Clifford's "Traveling Cultures" in Cultural Studies; Homi Bhabha's The Location of Culture; Walter Mignolo's "The Many Faces of Cosmo-polis: Border Thinking and Critical Cosmopolitanism"; Jacques Derrida's On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness; Immanuel Kant's "Perpetual Peace: a Philosophical Sketch"; a speech by former Conservative UK prime minister Theresa May; we love Star Trek; a speech by former Conservative UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher; cities of sanctuary, especially currently in the US context; the Leicester 2021 census; Conservative-turned-Reform* politician Robert Jenrick's words about Birmingham; Reform-led councils installing UK and England flags; a survey about how people in the UK interpret the proliferation of flags; Gogglebox's episode that includes commentary on the proliferation of flags; Stuart Hall's "Encoding/decoding"; Steven Vertovec on superdiversity; Canada's official multicultural policy, about which Eva Mackey, Smaro Kamboureli, and Wayde Compton, among others, have written; Toronto's linguistic diversity; an example image of the non-border Zalfa saw; the straight line of much of the Canada-US border; and Wayde Compton again.

*The UK's Reform party is not to be confused with Canada's Reform party (1987-2000), although they share similar right-wing politics. Canada's Reform party was subsequently absorbed (after first being renamed) into the Conservative Party of Canada.

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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Haven’t read Delacroix’s Small Boat yet? You know what to do! Head to your local independent bookshop, or borrow a copy from your library.

Lines Drawn upon the Water is the title of a collection edited by Karl S. Hele about First Nations people in the Great Lakes borderlands.

Speaking of the Great Lakes, our favourite line of David W. McFadden’s about Lake Huron is (still) from Great Lakes Suite.

Behold the (UK) cover of Yann Martel’s 2001 novel Life of Pi.

For more on the UK and France’s “one in, one out” deal, see this piece by Matilde Rosina.

Three-year-old Alan Kurdi and his family died in September 2015.

For information about Australia’s detention policies, see the Refugee Council of Australia’s website.

Read Kent and Syla’s piece on small island nations here.

For a starting point to thinking about responsibility, see Robert E. Goodin’s Protecting the Vulnerable (1985) or read the UN’s Global Compact on Refugees.

The charity Care4Calais works with refugees in the UK, France, and Belgium.

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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This episode is the first time we’ve asked each other “how are you?” Yes, we’ve checked.

Here are two “rankings” for passports: the Henley Passport Index, which describes itself as “the only one of its kind based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Authority (IATA)” and the Global Passport Power Rank, which at the time of recording, ranked as “equal” passports issued by Canada, the UK, and Cyprus. Eagle-eyed listeners will note this has changed.

Thinking about the nationality/citizenship distinction, here’s an example of that slippage in the British context.

Gillian refers to C. Lynn Smith’s chapter “Is Citizenship a Gendered Concept?” in Citizenship, Diversity, and Pluralism: Canadian and Comparative Perspectives (eds Cairns et al.), 1999; and to Chelva Kanaganayakam’s chapter “Cool Dots and a Hybrid Scarborough: Multiculturalism as Canadian Myth” in Is Canada Postcolonial? Unsettling Canadian Literature(ed Moss), 2003.

“White civility” is an important analytical tool developed by Daniel Coleman in his book of the same title, published in 2006.

We discuss “Borders” by Canadian writer Thomas King, published in 1993 in the collection One Good Story, That One and more recently republished as a comic book with illustrations by the Métis artist Natasha Donovan.

For more on the Haudenosaunee Nationals’ travelling difficulties, please see this CBC article by Ka’nhehsí:io Deer.

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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Special thanks to our guest speakers, whose border stories we gratefully share with their consent: Jenneba Sie-Jallok, Loraine Masiya Mponela, Ambreen Hai, and Gaura Narayan.

Gillian manages to get the name of her hometown wrong in this episode: it's Victoria, not Vancouver (which is not on Vancouver Island!).

We recorded this episode at the brilliant “Hostile Environments and Hospitable Praxes” conference, organised by Dr Rachel Gregory Fox at the University of Kent, UK, 23-24 June 2025. Thank you, Rachel!

As we started to think about actually doing a podcast, we relied heavily on Stacey Copeland and Hannah McGregor’s A Guide to Academic Podcasting (2021).

Our amazing podcast editor is Steve Woodward, also known as The Podcasting Editor, without whom Gillian would sound like Moira Rose.

Gillian and Zalfa quote from previous episodes.

Zalfa and Gillian quote from Jacques Derrida’s Of Hospitality (translated by Rachel Bowlsby, to whom Gillian refers later in the episode).

Zalfa quotes Tiziano Bonini’s essay “Podcasting as a Hybrid Cultural Form Between Old and New Media” and Michelle Hilmes’ essay “But Is It Radio? New Forms and Voices in the Audio Private Sphere”, from The Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcast Studies (2022).

Sara Ahmed writes about “the feminist ear.”

Canadian poet David W. McFadden’s collection Great Lakes Suite (1997) inspired the dots and dashes of our podcast’s name [and Zalfa’s brief foray into Morse Code]. Gillian references his work in this episode, including the line “the dots and dashes [...] glistening in the waves” (p.192).

Elizabeth Povinelli’s essay, “The Governance of the Prior” (2011)

Gillian mentions Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace (1795)

Mireille Rosello’s book Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest (2002)

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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The Urban Dictionary’s definition of “tsunamied” is very much not what Zalfa intended. In fact, she had to look it up on reading this entry in the show notes, and wishes she had turned on safe search.

For more on vulnerability, check out Judith Butler’s Precarious Life (2004), Martha Fineman’s “The Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in the Human Condition” (2008), Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism (2011), Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor (1978) and Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), and Polly Atkin’s Some of Us Just Fall (2023).

For more on the social model of disability, read Mike Oliver’s The Politics of Disablement: A Sociological Approach (1990). Read more about the origins of the social model at the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive.

Wayde Compton’s description of the Canada-US border as a “strait razorous border” is a pun on the Georgia Strait, a body of water interrupted by the Canada-US/British Columbia-Washington State borders. Read more in 49th Parallel Psalm.

The International Boundary Commission’s photo of the Canada-US border is very telling. As is this photo of the Mexico-US border.

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

Send us a Message

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch is available for purchase here, at your local independent bookstore, or check out your local library. It won the Booker Prize in 2023. (Read an article by Gillian about the Booker Prize.)

Booker Prize chair Esi Edugyan described it as "claustrophobic"; Lynch called it "an attempt at radical empathy."

We mentioned Métis author Cherie Dimaline's novels The Marrow Thieves (2017) and Hunting by Stars (2021).

We referred to the Indian Residential School system in Canada. Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their communities, and separated from their families, communities, and cultures in favour of a colonial "education." The 2015 Final Report of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission described this as cultural genocide. Read the Final Report and the Calls to Action.

The westernmost point of Europe is Cape Roca, Portugal.

The surge of applications for Irish citizenship after Brexit.

The attempt to introduce mandatory military service in the UK under Rishi Sunak.

The border-crossing powers of The Sound of Music (1965) had a lasting impact on both Gillian and Zalfa.

Refugee Council resource on the "small boats" issue exercising UK politics.

Gillian briefly channels Sophia in The Golden Girls.

The Peace Arch.

Prophet Song is about families in a time of crisis. In the real world, please consider donating to Watermelon Relief, All Our Relations, or Beit El Baraka.

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com