The construction of border fortifications to control easy access to countries territories has swiftly increased in the 21 st century due to the rising number of civilians that are moving across borders. It is not yet clear if the border fencing work is effective or not, but the answer depends on the purpose as to why they are constructed. For instance, border fencing cannot be used in stopping the modern military. This is because planes and missiles can go over the fence while tanks can easily penetrate through. Fences are neither important in marking the territorial extent of a country as building fences are quite expensive. There are alternatives such as boundary stones and GPS data which can work well for that purpose.
Despite fences being effective in keeping out unauthorized migrants, millions of people have still managed to cross the borders without authorization, which implies that border fencing does not work. This is because it is very difficult to fence longer borders entirely and guard it adequately just like the US-Mexico border, which only has a one-third of its length fenced. Secondly why the border fence is ineffective is that most of the unauthorized movements (terrorists or smugglers) do not happen on borders, but instead they enter with a valid visa and fail to leave, overstaying the visa term. Also, many smuggle goods got into the country via ports of entry or tunnels which are built under the fences. This explains why Israel has begun to construct a subterranean wall on Israel- Gaza border for them to address the tunnels that have been discovered.
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While these fundamental issues are very difficult and are hardly solved by whether a border is secured or not, building a border fence brings strong memory to mind and a powerful visual of action thus despite the expensive cost of construction and questionable effectiveness, there will be quite a number of border fences going up around the world.
Reference
Vallet, E. (2016). Borders, fences and walls: State of insecurity? . Routledge.
