Practice IB Global Politics Topic Borders with authentic exam-style questions for both SL and HL students. This question bank focuses on the exact syllabus content for Borders and mirrors Paper 1, 2, 3 style where relevant.
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Stimulus
Text extract (adapted): "The physical barrier along the United States to Mexico frontier has grown in stages. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 authorised hundreds of miles of fencing, and construction accelerated after 2017. By early 2021 about 458 miles of barrier had been completed, but the great majority replaced older, weaker fencing rather than sealing previously open ground. Border officials acknowledge that migration did not stop; instead crossing routes shifted into remoter desert and mountain terrain, where recorded migrant deaths rose to record levels. The emergency public-health order known as Title 42, in force from 2020 to 2023, allowed rapid expulsions but produced repeated attempts by the same individuals rather than fewer arrivals overall."
Using the stimulus, identify three claims the stimulus makes about the United States to Mexico border wall.
Analyse one political issue raised by the construction of physical barriers along the United States to Mexico border.
Recommend a course of action that the United States federal government and Mexico could take to reduce migrant deaths along their shared border, and consider its limitations.
Evaluate the extent to which physical border barriers do more to project political symbolism than to control migration.
Stimulus
Contemporary border policy is pulled between two logics that rarely sit comfortably together. Securitised deterrence treats the border as a line to be defended, using physical barriers, rapid expulsion, and legal manoeuvres to discourage crossings before they happen. During the pandemic the United States invoked the public-health order known as Title 42 to expel migrants without asylum hearings, while the earlier Remain in Mexico policy required claimants to wait outside US territory.
Against this stands a humanitarian search-and-rescue obligation, the duty under the law of the sea to assist any person in distress regardless of their legal status. In the central Mediterranean, non-governmental rescue vessels have pulled thousands from unseaworthy boats, even as several coastal states have obstructed disembarkation and been accused of illegal pushbacks. The same stretch of water is at once a zone of enforcement and a site of rescue, and the two duties collide over a single sinking boat.
Adapted from "One Sinking Boat, Two Duties: Deterrence and Rescue at the Water's Edge" by Dr Marco Delacroix, Research Director in Maritime Migration, Mediterranean Affairs Quarterly (2022).
Using at least two examples from the stimulus, distinguish securitised deterrence from the humanitarian search-and-rescue obligation.
With explicit reference to a global political challenge from one of your researched case studies, explain how interaction between a state or IGO and a non-state actor has shaped responses to migrants in distress.
Based on your answer to part (b), recommend how states and rescue organisations could reconcile deterrence with rescue obligations, and analyse the tensions involved.
Evaluate the extent to which securitised deterrence at the border is incompatible with states' humanitarian obligations. Base your response on one researched case study and integrate links to at least two HL extension topic areas.
Stimulus
Border enforcement was once understood as a core function of the state, carried out by uniformed officials whose authority and answerability flowed from public law. State-operated border enforcement meant that decisions to stop, screen, or detain a traveller could be traced to an accountable public institution. The chain of responsibility, however imperfect, ran back to a government that voters could remove.
Today much of the frontier runs on privately contracted border technology and surveillance vendors. Frontex, the European border agency, has relied on private firms to supply aerial and maritime surveillance in the Mediterranean, while humanitarian agencies have rolled out biometric registration in refugee camps using contractor-built databases. Once installed, such systems tend to expand in function, migrating from identification to tracking and eligibility control, and the commercial owners of the data sit outside ordinary democratic oversight.
Adapted from "Who Owns the Watchtower? Function Creep in the Privatised Border" by Prof. Idris Tanaka, Chair of Surveillance Studies, Journal of Borderland Governance (2022).
Using at least two examples from the stimulus, distinguish state-operated border enforcement from privately contracted border technology and surveillance vendors.
With explicit reference to a global political challenge from one of your researched case studies, explain how a partnership between a state or IGO and a private or non-state actor has been used to deliver border technology.
Based on your answer to part (b), analyse the risks that arise when border surveillance functions are delegated to private vendors.
Evaluate the extent to which the privatisation of border technology undermines democratic accountability over who crosses a border. Base your response on one researched case study and integrate links to at least two HL extension topic areas.
Stimulus
Text extract (adapted): "Not all borders are drawn on maps between states. Within Botswana, the San people, also called the Basarwa or Bushmen, were removed from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in a series of relocations that the government said were about development and conservation. In 2006 the Botswana High Court ruled that the eviction had been unlawful and that the San had the right to return to their ancestral land. A further Court of Appeal ruling in 2011 recognised their right to access water on the reserve. Yet many San remained marginalised in resettlement areas, cut off from land, livelihoods and services. Their life chances were shaped less by any international frontier than by internal lines of ethnicity, class and belonging that ran through the state itself."
Using the stimulus, identify three claims the stimulus makes about the San (Basarwa) and internal borders within Botswana.
Analyse one political issue raised by the internal marginalisation of the San (Basarwa) within Botswana.
Recommend a course of action that the government of Botswana and civil society organisations could take to improve the life chances of marginalised San (Basarwa) communities, and consider its limitations.
Evaluate the extent to which internal borders of ethnicity and class shape life chances more powerfully than international borders.
Stimulus
The European project once treated free movement within a shared area as one of its defining achievements, allowing people to cross internal frontiers without passport checks under the Schengen arrangement. For millions this dissolved the border into a line on a map, unnoticed in daily life. The promise was that mobility, not control, would be the default within the shared space.
That default has proven reversible. Faced with the 2015 migration surge and later security concerns, several Schengen members reimposed internal border checks, and during the COVID-19 pandemic governments closed borders and suspended free movement almost overnight to slow the virus. Reimposed internal border checks revealed that open borders rest on political choices that can be withdrawn, and that the line thought to have vanished can reappear within hours.
Adapted from "The Border That Came Back: Reversibility Inside the Open Area" by Dr Sofia Bergqvist, Reader in European Integration, Nordic Review of Political Studies (2021).
Using at least two examples from the stimulus, contrast free movement within a shared area with reimposed internal border checks.
With explicit reference to a global political challenge from one of your researched case studies, explain how coordination between a state or IGO and a non-state actor has been used to manage internal border controls.
Based on your answer to part (b), analyse the consequences of reimposing internal border checks within a shared area of free movement.
Evaluate the extent to which the reimposition of internal border checks shows that open borders are only a temporary political arrangement. Base your response on one researched case study and integrate links to at least two HL extension topic areas.