Abstract

This study of xenophobia and how it both exploits and excludes is an incisive commentary on a globalizing world and its consequences for ordinary people's lives. Using the examples of Sub-Saharan Africa's two most economically successful nations, it meticulously documents the fate of immigrants and the new politics of insiders and outsiders. As globalization becomes a palpable reality, citizenship, sociality and belonging are subjected to stresses to which few societies have devised a civil response beyond yet more controls.
'A remarkable study? Among the many significant theoretical and empirical contributions that Nyamnjoh makes in this study, perhaps most incisive is the intensity with which Africa is incorporated into the consumption practices of global capitalism in that no object, territory or experience is beyond being a locus of often fierce struggle over their disposition and use.' AbdouMaliq Simone, author For the City Yet to Come: Changing Urban Life in Africa 'By an ethnographic focus on South Africa and Botswana, this book elegantly and convincingly illustrates the ills of bounded citizenship of the nation-state. Whether it is the Makwerekwere or the foreign maids, it shows how certain groups based upon race, ethnicity, gender, class and geography have been systematically constituted as strangers, outsiders and aliens of the nation-state. It shows how modernization as westernization involves using nation-state regimes as the primary juridico-political means by which old inequalities are sustained and entrenched and new inequalities are produced and reproduced. It is a lucidly written book with a purpose and passion. It should be read by all those concerned with modern citizenship and inequalities it institutes.' Engin F. Isin, Professor and Canada Research Chair, Division of Social Science, York University, Toronto 'Labour migration has been a major feature of southern African history for over a century. Yet in the last couple of decades, patterns of mobility in the subcontinent have changed radically. Francis Nyamnjoh's innovative and absorbing text illustrates the new forces driving mobility, their politics and their consequences. He brings a freshness of vision, and a global perspective to the problems. He writes with sharp insight on domestic servants, refugees, on xenophobia and inclusion. This book will be a high priority/must read for anyone interested in regional labour markets, in regional politics, and in changing identities.' William Beinart, Professor of Race Relations, St Antony's College, University of Oxford 'Nyamnjoh's work shows how national governments like the ones in Southern Africa are caught in a conundrum - where on one hand they are supposed to follow the logic of globalisation and on the other they are forced to take steps because of popular domestic pressures which go contrary to the logic of globalisation. [...] Overall, this post-colonial, constructivist analysis of how people create their identity and their interests is a fine interpretation of issues of labour mobility and treads on some of the unexplored paths of research in the discipline of social science.' Sameer Suryakant Patil, Jawaharlal Nehru University, in Politikon 'This book is without doubt a timely and perceptive analysis of labor migration and identity politics in contemporary South Africa. It also contains wider implications beyond the case of southern Africa by offering a poignant diagnosis for citizenship and globalization in general. This book can be a very useful text in courses on migration and globalization at both undergraduate and graduate levels.' Pei Chia Lan, American Journal of Sociology
Francis B. Nyamnjoh is Associate Professor and Head of Publications and Dissemination with the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA).