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Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism by Harsha Walia
nat_sanchez's review
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
4.5
This book is all about the tyranny of borders as they are used to funnel wealth and commodities and control and immobilize people to uphold racial, imperial, capitalism. Walia uses examples from all over the world to make a case for no borders and to explicate the way that fascist and neoliberal regimes co-opt working class desperation into talking points that mask the same goals — to hoard wealth and control land and people. She also talks about the possibility to imagine and create a world that actually centers care. It’s bleak but hopeful.
tiffanywang29's review
5.0
Brilliant. Expansive. Both angering and inspiring (to destroy capitalism). Recommend to literally everyone, no matter how much you think you know about capitalism, migration, imperialism, nationalism, the cisheteropatriarchy, etc. You will learn something - I promise.
jewitt's review
informative
tense
medium-paced
5.0
"The border, however, is less about a politics of movement per se and is better understood as a key method of imperial state formation, hierarchical social ordering, labor control, and xenophobic nationalism."
This excellent, comprehensive book gets more relevant and urgent with each passing day.
This excellent, comprehensive book gets more relevant and urgent with each passing day.
frmvivian's review
stopped bc of library loan exp
read intro, c1-2
Good point to jump back on research of travel and expats + citizenship-passports
read intro, c1-2
Good point to jump back on research of travel and expats + citizenship-passports
pink_distro's review
5.0
this is an astonishing book. the scope of it is incredible and is so deeply researched and well rounded in its analysis. its spot on all the time and moves on so quickly from thing to thing that it can be disorienting to read a little — i made it thru 2 chapters a year ago and picked it up again a week or 2 ago and finished it. but thank god 4 it.
Harsha Walia analyzes:
— the causes of displacement and irregular migration in the first place: neoliberal economics, imperialist aggression, and climate change to name a few
— how borders are not just territorial boundaries ,, but central tools of global capitalist markets, racial/gendered/class orderings, state formation, and more
— that borders are really happening everywhere,, enforced internally through citizenship regimes and pushed externally by making other countries hold the west's detention centers, border guards, refugee camps, etc
— historical foundations of bordering in settler colonialism, colonization, chattel slavery, indentured servitude, and more (depending on place)
— migrant worker programs across the globe
— right wing movements and nationalisms, and how they relate to liberal multiculturalism (she explains how liberalism kind of creates right wing movements ... "the frankenstein of liberalism" she aptly says)
and ALL the while shes constantly highlighting feminist analyses, tying things back to their historical foundations, and mentioning grassroots resistance movements.
she isn't US centric as many armchair analyses of empire are — she spends whole chapters on europe, australia, and canada as imperial cores. she also doesn't flatten the global south, analyzing the right wing movements of India and Brazil, the brutal migrant worker programs of the Gulf countries, and other ways empire operates through neocolonial governments and client states. all the while she highlights the movements and actions being taken by oppressed peoples, not denying their agency and not making empire seem inevitable.
would 10/10 recommend reading it. really does demonstrate the deep and wide terror of borders, global capitalism, and empire, and deeply affirms the belief that ... while there is so much more to it and so much complexity to the world .... whatever we can do to weaken or destabilize the regimes of the US, europe, canada, and australia is gonna do a LOT of people a LOT of good.
Harsha Walia analyzes:
— the causes of displacement and irregular migration in the first place: neoliberal economics, imperialist aggression, and climate change to name a few
— how borders are not just territorial boundaries ,, but central tools of global capitalist markets, racial/gendered/class orderings, state formation, and more
— that borders are really happening everywhere,, enforced internally through citizenship regimes and pushed externally by making other countries hold the west's detention centers, border guards, refugee camps, etc
— historical foundations of bordering in settler colonialism, colonization, chattel slavery, indentured servitude, and more (depending on place)
— migrant worker programs across the globe
— right wing movements and nationalisms, and how they relate to liberal multiculturalism (she explains how liberalism kind of creates right wing movements ... "the frankenstein of liberalism" she aptly says)
and ALL the while shes constantly highlighting feminist analyses, tying things back to their historical foundations, and mentioning grassroots resistance movements.
she isn't US centric as many armchair analyses of empire are — she spends whole chapters on europe, australia, and canada as imperial cores. she also doesn't flatten the global south, analyzing the right wing movements of India and Brazil, the brutal migrant worker programs of the Gulf countries, and other ways empire operates through neocolonial governments and client states. all the while she highlights the movements and actions being taken by oppressed peoples, not denying their agency and not making empire seem inevitable.
would 10/10 recommend reading it. really does demonstrate the deep and wide terror of borders, global capitalism, and empire, and deeply affirms the belief that ... while there is so much more to it and so much complexity to the world .... whatever we can do to weaken or destabilize the regimes of the US, europe, canada, and australia is gonna do a LOT of people a LOT of good.
tony_from_work's review
5.0
A friend recently asked if I've ever read a book that I felt really changed the way I think, and I'd say this is an example. If you have any interest whatsoever in labor exploitation and migrant rights, this is an absolute must-read.
It explores how governments and corporations are incentivized to make it as hard as possible for migrants to work legally, to make the consequences for illegal work as draconian as possible, and to create propaganda that encourages fear and mistrust of the migrant worker. If someone has just had to leave their country but can't meet the impossibly high, expensive, time-consuming, and potentially dangerous standards of finding "legal" work in their new country, they have to work "illegally." And if the punishment for working "illegally" amounts to a death sentence or imprisonment or violence, then workers have absolutely no bargaining power and have to live under the constant fear of exposure for a "crime" they've essentially been forced to commit for someone else's profit. As a consequence, wealthy countries like the U.S. get to benefit off a massive labor force that they can get away with underpaying and depriving of basic labor rights. Capitalist culture loves to demean and demonize the migrant workers that it needs to survive, because the more civic support there is for harsher migration laws, the safer this sadistic racket is from exposure and liberation.
Anyway, this book outlines this much better than my summary. You should read it.
It explores how governments and corporations are incentivized to make it as hard as possible for migrants to work legally, to make the consequences for illegal work as draconian as possible, and to create propaganda that encourages fear and mistrust of the migrant worker. If someone has just had to leave their country but can't meet the impossibly high, expensive, time-consuming, and potentially dangerous standards of finding "legal" work in their new country, they have to work "illegally." And if the punishment for working "illegally" amounts to a death sentence or imprisonment or violence, then workers have absolutely no bargaining power and have to live under the constant fear of exposure for a "crime" they've essentially been forced to commit for someone else's profit. As a consequence, wealthy countries like the U.S. get to benefit off a massive labor force that they can get away with underpaying and depriving of basic labor rights. Capitalist culture loves to demean and demonize the migrant workers that it needs to survive, because the more civic support there is for harsher migration laws, the safer this sadistic racket is from exposure and liberation.
Anyway, this book outlines this much better than my summary. You should read it.