Opportunities for Inter-Regional Solidarity
December 8, 2021
By Faisal Ahmed
Why are you where you are? It sounds like a weird question, and most of us don’t really think about it that often. After all, what’s the weather or climate got to do with who we are?
We don’t think about the implications of a geographic location on our lives. However, where you live can have huge implications on your life, beyond the natural environment. The place you live dictates who you’re surrounded by, and the people who we spend time with have massive implications for our own personalities, political leanings, etc. But the effect of a location goes further, if you live in a More Developed Country (MDC), you’re more likely to have access to better public services and infrastructure. For example, the United States has an incredibly developed public transportation system. This makes it easier for more people to travel and engage in economic activity, whether it be work or education. In addition, the medical or hospital infrastructure in MDCs lead to lower maternal mortality rates compared to Less Developed Countries (LDCs). Obviously this variation exists within countries too, simply because someone is born in the state of Massachusetts they are provided with a better public education system than most other states in the United States.
All of this goes to show how important where we are is in determining various outcomes of our lives, all the way from personality to life expectancy. So if where we live is so important, we should just choose the best place to live? In an ideal world, yes we would all live in the best place to live. However, a number of factors limit a person’s mobility. First of all, most people end up living in the same area where they grew up. This makes sense. Migrating to a different location often means leaving family, friends and culture behind, which is an incredibly difficult decision to make even if you might be able to pursue better opportunities in terms of other metrics. In addition, the cost of moving is incredibly high. Not only are you acclimating to different people and culture, without the support networks that home provides, you’re also going to face an upfront financial cost of getting to the place where you’re moving to. This means we’re confined to end up around the same place where we grew up. International migrants only accounted for 3.5% of the global population in 2019 .
What this means is that we’ve got something, a geographic location, which has large implications on our lives, but we have little control over. If you grew up in a less privileged place your life becomes harder based on no decision you’ve made.
This motivates a concept I deeply believe in: inter-regional solidarity. I describe inter-regional solidarity as mutualistic partnerships that span across different geographic regions. I believe that this is incredibly important because I think it’s how we can reduce the inequities that exist between different geographic locations. Those who live in privileged locations should find it incumbent on themselves to reduce inequities, because just as those in less privileged geographic locations, they didn’t do anything to earn their geographic privilege. In addition, we’re seeing how interconnected consequences of our world are. Carbon emissions by MDCs have caused big climate disasters in LDCs. The negative consequences of decisions are always experienced by the people who made them.
It’s important to be responsible when engaging in inter-regional solidarity. People throughout history and even contemporarily use this idea to justify colonial or colonial adjacent agendas and those ought to be condemned in every aspect. Inter-regional solidarity doesn’t mean cultural destruction, or forcing assimilation. It’s a humble interaction to reduce important inequities.
Here at the Community Service Center (CSC), we’ve got Alternative Service Breaks (ASBs) where students from Boston University have the opportunity to engage in responsible inter-regional service during their spring breaks. The coordinators of each trip, who plan and lead the trips, have meetings through the fall and into the spring in order to meticulously detail their trips. You can follow their Instagram page for more information. These trips allow for us to foster inter-regional solidarity within the United States and break down the privileges experienced by geographic location.
(Disclaimer, but also advertisement, I am one of the coordinators for ASB leading a trip to Louisburg, North Carolina.