![]() ![]() The public sphere in Hamid’s descriptions and illustrations, which is quite hostile to refugees and tries to exclude them by using nativists as its agents, turns out to be the concentration of political problems as Balibar puts it in a sociopolitical context. Mohsin Hamid’s most recent novel, Exit West (2017), questions the notion of these new sociopolitical borders in Europe by highlighting a public sphere in the city of London where inclusion and exclusion are utilized as political weapons. ![]() As sociopolitical borders assume the roles of benchmarks for national identity and social acceptance, a series of sociocultural problems arise that reshape the standards of inclusion, and of course, political agendas. These are not intrinsically territorial borders protected by Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, but rather borders of “new sociopolitical entities,” which permeate in cosmopolitan cities, where they play a crucial role in constituting the public sphere. Balibar associates European borders with national identity as well as violence. Although Balibar said this more than a decade ago, it is still true that borders in Europe have novel connotations that are utterly different than their conventional associations. According to French philosopher Étienne Balibar, the term border “is undergoing a profound change in meaning” (Balibar, 2004).
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