A week before M.I.A.'s 11th birthday, the singer, her mother and her siblings fled civil war in Sri Lanka. They arrived in London where they were housed as refugees. The singer therefore knows more than most of us about migrants and on this heartfelt song, she reminds us that for refugees worldwide, borders are not a sign of comfort. The track was released a fortnight after the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, a tragedy that prompted France to call for the suspension of open borders within Europe.
Speaking to NPR, M.I.A highlighted the tension between an increasingly globalized world and traditional border systems: "You don't put the borders on Apple, you don't put borders on YouTube, and you don't put borders on MTV," she said. "So to make the borders even taller when actually what the creative world is doing, or the business world is doing, is actually the opposite, then you're always going to have this problem."
The self-directed video finds M.I.A. joining a group of refugees as they migrate by land and sea, scaling barbed wire fences in their attempt to reach new borders. The singer dedicated the clip to her Uncle Bala, one of the first Tamil immigrants, who helped her family escape from Sri Lanka to England.
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