On Nunukan Island, the world is no global village. Only 50 kilometers or so from Tawau, in Sabah, Malaysia, the most powerless of people are reminded just what a map of the world means, a map drawn up from above; once by colonial powers, now by heartless regimes.

Borders, passports and laws exhort shrill dismissal of all the talk over the last couple of decades about the "world-sans-frontières". The uniformed immigration of