European Nations Where the Concept of Borders Has Vanished

0. Before getting into it

Today I went to a nearby town partly to buy meat. I tried to buy meat at the butcher's, but since I didn't know where it was, I stopped by the supermarket, and as it happened, asking there, they said the butcher doesn't open on Mondays. In his expression, 'On Monday is ghost town.' so.. that makes it a butcher in a very, very 'small town' that doesn't open well even on Mondays. At any rate, the café I stopped by on the way was very impressive, so I'll talk briefly about something I heard at that café.

1. What Happened

I went to a café in Llandovery. It was a café behind a small shop, and its name was 'The Old Printing Office.' There weren't that many seats, about 26 in all, and there was 'cake' made and sold in-house at the café. There were several kinds of cake — raisin cake, sponge cake with cream and apple jam in the middle, brownies, cake with apple and cranberry, chocolate roll cake, and so on. There was an espresso machine, no cold drinks were visible - maybe because it was winter - and there were espresso, americano, cappuccino, mocha, and latte. As I agonized over choosing a drink, a staff member saw my necklace and, figuring out where I was from, a simple conversation started; she was a woman from Denmark, and she said that because her boyfriend is a local she's been settling here for three years. She said she spent Christmas this time too working at this café here. Listening, it was kind of fascinating.

2. Nationality and Borders.

Actually, while in Europe I hadn't thought for long about how convenient living in Europe with 'European citizenship' is, but the benefits of EU citizenship within the EU seem visible from time to time. For one, the community called the EU functions as 'a single nation.' Within EU countries, medical insurance benefits are shared too (the EHIC card), and in crossing borders there's no particular visa inspection. You can move around as if it's one big nation. If you're someone with EU citizenship, whether Britain or Germany, you can live wherever you want to live, and if you want to get a job you can get a job. This is a considerable level of convenience. So let's think for a moment about whether other countries are like that.

- East Asia

Within East Asia they always do passport inspections. Whether Japanese, Chinese, or Korean, passport inspection is basic, and to get a job you have to obtain a separate visa. Without obtaining separate permission, going to another country to reside is quite difficult.

- Southeast Asia

'ASEAN,' which came after the EU, has had many walls torn down in the economic sector, but there are still many walls in person-to-person exchange. They do all the basic inspections. They're relatively more contiguous as nations, but Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia all do visa inspections.

- US, Canada

I don't know anything about here. Still, since US visas and Canadian visas are quite 'aristocratic-class' visas, there shouldn't be much problem crossing borders, it seems.

- South America, Africa

Here, communities have formed, but that doesn't mean border inspections have disappeared.

3. Summary

In an article I saw a while ago, I heard that a 'border-erasing' effort led by 'advanced countries' is underway. They said that beyond dual citizenship, even triple citizenship is being allowed. Such allowance of nationality makes movement between nations convenient, and seems to have the effect of making it easier for 'talent' to move too. In 21st-century society, the boundaries of nations are gradually disappearing, but it seems to be a situation where rights arise based on 'nationality.' With a single nationality, everything from employment to medical insurance benefits.

But I don't know whether it'd be good for Korea-China-Japan relations to become like Europe. It seems like it wouldn't be good. Korea/Japan maybe, but the gap with China is still too severe. At the foundation that allowed Europe to form a 'community' must have been similarly paced growth and similarly scaled income levels. But such cases are limited to 'Europe,' and in the case of other nations, such cases are hard to find. North America isn't like that either, South America has severe wealth gaps, the Middle East is in ongoing conflict (sectarian), and Asia still has too-strong individual-national characteristics for that.

On that note, I'll close this piece with one question and one answer from a friend who holds both an Italian passport and a Brazilian passport.

Q. By holding an Italian passport, was there something like a 'privilege'?

A. You don't need a visa to travel. You can just live in Europe - you can enjoy study, employment, and the various benefits you can enjoy with EU citizenship - and if you show a Brazilian passport they ask this and that at the border, but if you show an Italian passport they ask nothing and just let you through.

2016/01/18