A review by bisexualbookshelf
Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism by Harsha Walia

informative reflective slow-paced

4.75

"Right-wing nationalism is bourgeois nationalism, and in our struggles against capitalist austerity we must emphasize that our enemy arrives in a limousine and not on a boat."

Harsha Walia’s Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism is a searing indictment of how borders aren’t just lines on a map but weapons of capitalist and racial domination. Walia dismantles the myth that migration is a crisis needing management—what we’re really witnessing is a crisis of displacement, driven by imperial wars, neoliberal extraction, and climate devastation, all orchestrated by the very states that claim to offer refuge. With unflinching clarity, she exposes how borders don’t just keep people out; they uphold global apartheid, divide the working class, and consolidate ruling-class power.

One of the book’s most urgent takeaways is how white supremacy has shaped immigration laws to maintain its stranglehold on power. As Walia makes clear, “illegal” migration only exists because the state criminalizes movement while ensuring that racialized migrants remain hyper-exploitable. She also hones in on US border imperialism’s direct harm to Indigenous nations within occupied territories—this land was never the US government’s to police in the first place. The book expertly weaves together how border control is inseparable from state violence, linking militarized immigration enforcement to the War on Drugs, free trade agreements like NAFTA, and the forced displacement they create.

As someone who grew up in post-9/11 America, Walia’s discussion of the War on Terror hit especially hard. I’ve watched Islamophobia, surveillance, and mass deportations become routine, and Border and Rule makes it impossible to ignore how US border policies are part of a much larger global system of oppression. From the US-Mexico border to Fortress Europe to the violent policing of Palestinians, Rohingya Muslims, and caste-oppressed groups in India, Walia connects the dots with a precision that left me enraged, inspired, and even more committed to border abolition.

📖 Read this if you love: anti-imperialist analysis, radical frameworks for solidarity, and the works of Angela Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore.

🔑 Key Themes: Imperialism and Displacement, Capitalism and Migrant Labor Exploitation, State Violence and Surveillance, Border Abolition. 
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