Everyday is made up of barriers, a concept that is present everywhere. Barriers in our behaviour and treat with strangers, barriers between a social status and another, barriers in access to everyday things, uncountable rules that direct us.

When you have the opportunity to travel and experiment different cultures you notice the amount of barriers that separate us — not just talking religion and languages but the limit between nationalities. For some of us nationality tells you where you can and can’t go, which countries you can visit and which you can’t. If you look closer at these limitations you realise the absurdity, this constitutes that where you are born only because it has a different history or for being in a certain location may limit you and everyone in it to an invisible wall. Society needs rules to guarantee its functionality and with that comes pacts between nations, history proves that, yet, history also proves how nationalism has been the main cause of conflict and destruction.

In today’s world discrimination is a topic that receives significant and rightful attention. Each day a new representative gets on his feet, standing up for the issue and its consequences: race, gender equality, the growing gap between the rich and the poor. However, where is the fight for discrimination between nations? Who is going to talk about the global inequality that citizens of developing countries have to experience? This is not about visas and residence permissions but about the core of these issues, the origin of the bureaucracy some people have to go through.

Today, a traveler that comes from a South American country through an European airport more times than not experiences a more than uncomfortable setback dismissing the possibility that this person might be the living example of honesty, and let’s consider the fact that this traveler probably had to do and incredible amount of paperwork just to have the permission to be at that airport at that set moment. It’s a country’s prerogative to choose which traits difference it from the next, to work towards the wellbeing of its citizens and to keep its culture very much alive. The issue is not culture, culture should be celebrated, culture is part of everyone's history but there is a difference between celebrating a culture and discriminating all of those who are not a part of it. Making the word foreigner almost a dirty word, an insult of some kind when each and every one of us is a foreigner to someone else, yet the sense of superiority grabs on. The whole idea is one we know too well, this intolerance that lives on our day to day is constantly ignored and looked over, all thanks to the demagogues that know how to wrap this exclusion in a shiny glossy paper called ‘patriotism’.

It’s 2017 and instead of opening doors, walls are being build. In first world countries, nationalists are gaining even more power, therefore their obsolete ideas keep expanding. The irony is that each day we look for more developed, faster and easier ways of communicating; globalisation is growing stronger and yet the restrictions around countries keep amplifying.

A philosopher once said: “There is no country on earth which is not home to more than one different but usually coexisting culture. Cultural heritage is not the same thing as national identity.” When are the powerful leaders going to understand that boundaries between cultures only create rivalry and sorrow? In a world seeking for connections we keep implementing divisions.

Lower the barriers, stop the jingoism and you will see real development, institutions will have to compete with the world and not just their local neighbors, brilliant minds will have the liberty to take their knowledge everywhere, and students will create a different definition of freedom. If societies through history were able to free themselves from dictatorial regimes and biased leaders, the modern world can open its mind to the idea of indiscrimination between borders. Barriers separate families, separate lovers, separate great minds from one another. The same voices that fight for same sex marriage under the cry that a government can’t tell you who to love, should be fighting for those who can’t be together because of the bureaucracy implemented by nationalists. Those who fight for race equality should fight for discrimination in transit caused by different colour passports. Those who fight for the access to education should stand up for those students that can’t apply to universities abroad because tuition fees are tripled for the sole reason of being a foreigner, never mind the fact that that student has the potential of contributing greatness for the world of tomorrow.

Nationalism may one day lead to desperation because people do not like cages, people seek connection, access, and knowledge; It's ultimately a recipe for chaos, technology pulling one way while government pulls to another.

It’s a time for transformation, a time where the word patriotism has to stop being a tool for deceit. We live in a globalised world, we are a mix of races and a fusion of cultures, don’t ostracise, remember that the ones who do this are the ones who end up being on the wrong side of history.

Exclusion is a dirty word, why do we keep embracing it?