This is one of those books where I thought - why have I not heard about this -- there is so much reporting on migration across the globe but I had no idea how high tech (and even more dehumanizing) it has become. Once again, there are many corporations out there in partnership with governments seeking to make profits. Migrants who are escaping from violence, climate change, poverty, are willing to risk everything to find a safer place for them and their families. I already had a sense of the hateful rhetoric and inhumane treatment of these refugees, but this book brings an additional layer of inhumanity to the plight of these people. What makes this book especially powerful is that the author goes to all of the places in the book to see how refugee tent communities have evolved over time to the increase in High Tech to corral and confine people and erase their individuality. A sobering and important read.

Thank you to Netgalley and The New Press for an ARC and I voluntarily left this review.

There are books that radicalise you and/or revolutionise your thinking; Petra Molnar’s The Walls Have Eyes has done both for me. I have been thinking in abstract ways about borders (and map-making) for a long time; anyone from the “Global South” who has ever crossed a border or applied for a visa knows the violence of borders. Molnar’s book turns the abstract into real stories about people on the move, about how they’re brutalised by the powerful—particularly, in today’s world, through the use of dystopian technology.

It’s difficult, incredibly painful, to read about how the most vulnerable among us—people fleeing war, or instability, or economic conditions created or exacerbated by the very same powerful nations mentioned above, those of the “Global North”—encounter high walls, barbed wire, robodogs, biometric registration and scanning, and cameras on surveillance towers; people smugglers—coyotes, or whatever name they may use regionally; rubber bullets, teargas, the Greek coast guard that flips their boats over or tows them back into international waters; camps and detention centres that are open prisons, where one only gets food if one consents to have one’s iris scanned; the Turkish border patrol that strips, searches and beats migrants, terrorising them with dogs; EU-funded or facilitated death camps in Libya; death, humiliation, trauma, and injury; and for these vulnerable people to very rarely find the asylum and sanctuary they seek. It is the most horrendous thing, and it is going on right under all of our noses, every day. We really only hear about the worst cases of abuse or death. It is horrendous, and it is real. All of us understand the very human desire to seek safety, refuge, a better life for ourselves and loved ones; half the world faces terrible barriers when they do.

Molnar has done a stellar job in shining a light on all of this, and on the huge and powerful complex of states and private actors behind it. Truthfully, I found myself in an abyss of despair towards the end of the book; it feels hopeless, the mountain insurmountable, the whole problem insuperable, rooted as it is in old imperial structures and colonial power differentials—which, as we know, continue to be as active today as they ever were. But Molar ends the book on a note of hope in resistance: there are small and large ways to resist, and it is happening. Molnar herself is doing the work, and many others are. So is this book; and in opening the eyes of readers, it serves as a call to arms.

A sobering and incredibly necessary read. Many thanks to The New Press and to NetGalley for early access.

Back in 2017, I read an anthology titled Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America and inside found an essay by Melissa Arjona, "Dispatches from a Texas militarized zone". I was horrified but fascinated at the surveillance techniques she detailed along the Texas/Mexico border. In the intervening years, I've thought back to that essay as we swing wildly in a xenophobic direction and as my state of Texas becomes more and more divided.

Petra Molnar's The Walls Have Eyes builds on the content of that essay, in excruciating detail, Molnar gives the reader insight into how technology has allowed our government to wield a ruthless knife when it comes to the life and death of people existing in our borderlands.

This was a tough read but very edifying. I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in government overreach as well as the humanitarian crisis happening along our Southern border.

Humans commit despicable acts upon other humans whom they see different. Different colour, different sex, different language, different accent. I will never understand humans.

This is thoroughly researched and studied with heavy writing which may make it difficult for some readers to get through.

The author is obviously very passionate and commendable. Very few people would do the work of which is spoken about in this book. Faith in humanity restored.

Well, this story is scarier than any of the horror fictions books I read.

Things I wasn't aware of (but should have been:
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it was training “robot dogs” to help secure the U.S.-Mexico border against migrants. Heat detectors and social media searches have also been added. These are things that I have seen in science fiction movies but never thought to think of as a weapon essentially used here.

This is a must read for anyone interested in such topics. There is no reason to think this would be utilized on migrants only. The idea that you could be linked to another social media "issues" because you are friends is something I have never even thought of. Naive for sure, but this book certainly woke me up.

Petra Molnar is an anthropologist and a lawyer. She has clearly spent years on her research. Her information on algorithms and the role of corporations is sobering and a must read for all citizens!
#thenewpress #thewallshaveeyes #petramolnar