Scholars Mind

Trapped Between Borders

In the 2004 film The Terminal, a traveler lands at an American airport only to discover that his country’s government has collapsed. With his passport no longer valid, he can’t enter the United States, but he also can’t go home again—so he ends up living at the airport indefinitely. Watch highlights from the film with your team, then consider the real case of Mehran Karimi Nasser that inspired it. Why do you think Steven Spielberg made the changes to the story that he did? And what should governments do in situations like these? You may also want to look into some more recent examples of people stuck in airports, including that of Edward Snowden.

A man's country collapses while he is in the air, and the passport in his hand stops meaning anything before the plane has finished landing.

Key concepts

Statelessness
Belonging to no country that will claim you, and losing the rights a nationality carries. A traveller can be stranded the same way mid-journey when their papers stop working: Nasseri's refugee papers went missing, and in 2013 the United States cancelled Snowden's passport while he was in transit, leaving him in a Moscow airport for over a month.

Every work — at a glance

  • The Terminal — Steven Spielberg (film)

    Spielberg's 2004 film: Tom Hanks lands at JFK just as a coup topples his home country, his passport instantly worthless — so he lives in the airport, a warm comedy over a bleak predicament.

+ 10 more works explained inside

What to know

  1. 01
    The premise is less far-fetched than it sounds — Nasseri really lived in an airport for eighteen years and others have for months — so the film dramatizes a genuine gap in how nations handle people who lose their legal right to be anywhere.

+ 1 more insight inside

Across subjects

The limbo has a real history: after World War I left millions stateless, the explorer Fridtjof Nansen got the League of Nations to issue the 'Nansen passport'

Theme connection

"Are We There Yet?"

Unable to go home or arrive anywhere else, a person makes a cruel home of the airport — Nasseri's eighteen years suspended between departure and arrival. Does sweetening a tragic true story honor it or betray it? And what does a government owe someone trapped between borders — asylum, or the strict rules that stranded them?

Practice — a sample

LITBelgium offered Nasseri a home in 1995 and he refused, holding out for Britain. This MOST undermines reading him as —

  • A Loyal to one country
  • B Trapped by the rules
  • C Charmed by the staff
  • D Broken by the wait
  • E Famous in Paris

Sign in to answer and see why each option is right or wrong.

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