Migration, Borders, and Borderlands: Making National Identity in Southern African Communities

✍ Scribed by Munyaradzi Mushonga, John Aerni-Flessner

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 323
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Compiling various perspectives from borderlands across the SADC region, Migration, Borders, and Borderlands: Making National Identity in Southern African Communities, edited by Munyaradzi Mushonga, John Aerni-Flessner, Chitja Twala, and Grey Magaiza, provides a synthesis of the experiences of borderland residents in this economically and socially integrated region. This book reframes debates around nationalism and belonging in southern Africa as it uses the idea of a "borderscape" to argue that nations are made at the border and in the contestations that take place in the borderlands. Understanding borders and bordering in the SADC region is crucial to understanding how policies made in oft-distant national capitals have played out among borderlands residents over time. The contributors present why national citizens in SADC so often end up in countries distant from where they were born and reside, and why leaders need to be cognizant of this. Exploring gender, history, policy, and the ways that people have moved across borders despite a myriad of restrictions stretching from the early twentieth century to the present, this collection centers the voices and experiences of the most marginal to make the plea for a more humane border regime in Southern Africa and globally.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Bibliography
Part I: Bordermaking, Smuggling, and Contemporary Resonances
Chapter 1: “Putting Gunboats on the Lake”: Frelimo’s Guerrilla War and Malawi’s Border Dispute with Tanzania in the 1960s
Colonial Cartography and the Origins of the Dispute over Lake Malawi/Nyasa
Making Waves: Frelimo, Mozambican Refugees, and the Battlefront of Lake Nyasa/Malawi
The Lake Malawi/Nyasa Showdown between Banda and Nyerere
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 2: Permitless Crossing and Tourism: Constructing Border Regimes in the Drakensberg Mountains, 1950s–Present
Mountain Passes, Government Policies, and Smuggling Regimes in the 1950s and 1960s
Tourism, Nature Conservation, and the Construction of “Illegality,” 1970s–1990s
Contemporary Border Crossing in the Drakensberg
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 3: Posted Passports and Fake Stamps: Documented Mobility, Invisibility, and the Informal Enforcement of South Africa’s Border with Zimbabwe
The Promise of Making It across the Border: Illegalization, Invisibility and the Making of South Africa’s Border Enforcement Regime
Point-of-Entry Visa Stamps and the Politics of Invisibility
A Slap in the Face: Fake Stamps and the Limits of Invisibility
Illegalization and Mobility Governance between South Africa and Zimbabwe
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 4: Contested Borderscapes, Border Farms, and Guided Travels in Zimbabwe’s Struggle for Self-Rule, 1960–1970s
Methodological Note
The Birth of Nyafaru Farm
Nyafaru as a Contested Borderscape
“Bring Us Two Rams of Sheep”: Mugabe’s and Tekere’s Guided Journey via Nyafaru
“Are You Going to University or War?” Nyafaru’s Encounters and Escape Plans
Nyafaru Farm Declared a No-Go Area, 1976–1980
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Part II: (Im)Mobilities, Transnational Communities, and Settlement
Chapter 5: “The River Is a Natural Resource, Not a Border?”: Understanding Tonga Borderland Community Responses to State Border Security Policy in Binga District of Zimbabwe, c. 1957 to 2017
Binga District Geographical Setting and Research Methods
The Tonga People’s Historical Attachment to the Zambezi River and Implications for Binga Community Responses to State Border Security Policy
The Construction of the Kariba Dam, Displacement, and the Realignment of the Tonga Borderland Community
Zambian Independence, the Zimbabwe War of Liberation, and the UDI, 1964–1979
Zimbabwean Independence and Border Life in Binga District, 1980–1999
The Nexus Re-examined: Border Security, Economic Development, and Tonga Social Life in Binga District, 2000–2017
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 6: Crossing a “Fictitious” Border: Angolan Refugees’ Mobility and Settling Dynamics in the Lower-Congo (1950s–1970s)
The Multidimensional Character of Mobility: Border-Crossing Dynamics and Refugee Eligibility
“Unsettling Refugees”: Mobility as an Asset Throughout the War
Crossing a “Fictitious” Border: Mobility, Settlement, and Refugeedom
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 7: Angolan and Mozambican Border Towns: Interconnecting and Consolidating Southern African Mobilities
Methods
Migration, Mobilities, Borders, and Urban Settlement
Border and Border-Related Towns in Angola and Mozambique
Border Control and Blockages to Mobility
Encouraged Cross-Border Circulation
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 8: Cross-Border Mobility of Mozambicans to South Africa and the Growth of Informal Trade in the City of Xai-Xai 2005–2022
Brief Notes on the City of Xai-Xai
A Brief History of Border Crossing of Mozambicans to South Africa
The Emergence and Development of Cross-Border Trade in the Study Area
The Categories of Informal Traders in Xai-Xai
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 9: Cultural Capital, Virtual Borderlands, and the Making of the Southern African Communities in Two Zambian Novels
Methodology
Virtual Borderlands and “Cultural Capital-on-the-Move” in Saidi’s Day of the Baboons and Banda-Aaku’s Patchwork
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Part III: Gender and the Politics of (Il)Legal Border Crossing
Chapter 10: “You Have to Pay with Your Body”: The Precarity of Subaltern Basotho Migrant Women within the Lesotho-South Africa Border(land)s
Methodology
Gendered “Borders and Orders,” Push-Pull Factors, and the (Im)mobility of Women
Subaltern Struggles and the Precarity of Subaltern Basotho Migrant Women in the Lesotho-South Africa Border(land)s
“You Have to Pay with Your Body”: Sexual Assault and Rape in the Lesotho-South Africa Border(land)s
Matsepi’s Sexual Harassment and Attempted Rape
Mampho’s Gang Rape by Four Paqama Scouts/Touts
Conclusion: Strategies to Enhance Human Security and De-Borderization
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 11: Women Entrepreneurs and Border Jumpers in the Zimbabwe-South Africa Border
ESAP and the Feminization of Migration across the Zimbabwe-South Africa Border
When Border Jumping Seems to be the Only Way Out
Women’s Evasion of Border Control Measures
Border Jumping as Business: Women Entrepreneurs in the Border Zone
Women and Violence in the Border Zone
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 12: Of Paqama Gates and Paqama Scouts: The Innerworkings of Regulated Illegal and Irregular Border Crossing between Lesotho and South Africa
Methodological Considerations
Contextualizing Lesotho’s Borders with South Africa and Their Proliferation
Borderlands and Cross-Border Historiographies
Unpacking the Nomenclature of Paqama Gates and Paqama Scouts
Paqama Activities at the Border Gates
The Risks Associated with Illegal Crossing through Paqama
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Contributors