ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the phenomenon of political wall-building in the Western world during 2015–16. Cases of the American–Mexican Wall, Brexit, the Hungarian refugee wall and Ukraine’s ‘European wall’ are considered in an effort to understand the reasons for such political behaviour. The chapter emphasises the human motivation behind these policy initiatives. It is argued that these political walls in fact function as symbolic images and radical means of structuring the world experience within the societies building them. The fact that these walls emerged, however, indicates a certain crisis within the world order itself, transcending the popular arguments about the resurgence of nationalist and right-wing politics and uncovering narratives of self-perpetuated weakness.
