Reckoning today from Porto, Portugal...

"Shall we drive up to Braga tomorrow?" asked our wanderlusting travel companion (and fianc), Anya.

Liberty cannot exist unless certain preconditions are present...and others absent. Freedom of movement is a rather obvious one...the opposite of captivity. Freedom demands an absence of bars and jail cells.

Indeed, it would be a strange brand of freedom where one had to ask permission to go (or to "be") here or there. Likewise, it would be a strange prison where inmates were free to "come and go as they please."

Along with freedom of association and freedom of speech, freedom of movement seems rather central to the idea of liberty.

But let's imagine for a second that, instead of driving to Braga, Anya had suggested flying to, say, Beirut...or Bucharest...or even Brasilia? (These are not infrequent suggestions, by the way.)

Your Australian-born editor needs a visa to visit these places...and many, many more locales besides. Our freedom of movement is, therefore, compromised. It is seen by The State as something "to be granted," as opposed to unalienable.

Even for Hong Kong, a destination which makes a habit of ranking among the "freest places on earth" on lists that monitor such things (here's one), individuals who happened to have been born on Terra Australis, through no fault of their own, are required to obtain a visa if they wish to "work, study, get trained, establish or join in any business or to take up residence." So say the agencies that oversee such things.

In fact, your antipodean editor would have considerable difficulty just leaving this tiny country were his papers not "in order." Likewise if he stayed too long. We need a valid passport to sit in a cafe in France or to sip a port in Porto...a permission book to move over imagined lines in the sand.

Odd, isn't it, what passes for freedom these days.

Read this article:

Freedom of Movement in a World of Invisible Borders