Harsha Walia - Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism

Praise for Border and Rule

In Walias expert hands, the planets sprawling borderlands are exposed as capitalisms gaping wounds, filled with escalating terror and torment as whiteness ferociously seeks to defend its imagined boundaries. This is a book of unsparing truth and dazzling ambition, providing readers with desperately needed intellectual ammunition to confront the inherent violence of borders. An enormous contribution to our movements.

Naomi Klein, author of On Fire

I was haunted and agitated by this book which is part expos and part clarion call for radical action. Harsha Walia offers an unsparing analysis of the violences of forced migration, borders, imperialism, and capitalism. The case studies presented in this book weave a quilt that provides us with needed knowledge to confront current problems that demand an organized collective response. The ideas in this book will linger long after youve put it down.

Mariame Kaba, founder and director of Project NIA

This indispensable, deeply researched, and beautifully written book is the first and most in-depth global analysis of borders and immigration, wars and displacement, and imperialism and Western white nationalism. Always with her ear to the ground and paying close attention to the people whose lives are wrecked or lost, Walia demands action and offers real solutions.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Not A Nation of Immigrants and An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States.

Harsha Walias deeply thoughtful and well-written book makes creative connections that other writers have preferred to ignore. It offers a lucid, insightful survey of the most difficult political issues that we face.

Paul Gilroy, author of The Black Atlantic

In this exceptional book, Harsha Walia takes us on a stunning and terrifying tour of the Great Wall of Capitalism, the border killing zone where viral fascism feeds on the bodies of the poor and persecuted.

Mike Davis, author of The Monster at Our Door and coauthor of No One Is Illegal

Border and Rule provides a kaleidoscopic expos, painstaking analysis, and damning indictment of the border regimes that are generating and fueling anti-migrant brutality and state violence on an international scale. Harsha Walia is relentless in drilling into, detailing, and cataloguing the array of processes, players, policies, and ideologies that uphold systems of border imperialismwhile simultaneously mapping out for us an understanding of how we can disrupt and dismantle them.

Justin Akers Chacn, author of Radicals in the Barrio and coauthor of No One Is Illegal

Building on the thesis of her seminal book Undoing Border Imperialism, Harsha Walias incisive voice in Border and Ruleequally rigorously theoretical and lovingly community-mindedrefuses to allow our struggles and organizing to exist in vacuums. From anti-Black police murders and carcerality, to the fortressing of borders across Indigenous lands, to the fabricated migrant crises, to the exploitations of their labor, and to the racial nationalisms and legal structures that drive these violences, Walias latest book provides an international cartography of the crisis of global neoliberalism. It is a stunning and horrific elucidation of Ayesha Siddiqis line that Every border implies the violence of its maintenance. But the narrative Walia deftly weaves is the polar opposite of alarmist political nihilism: it is a clarion call for our solidarities to always transcend the physical and ideological boundaries drawn by empire. This is not simply a book about violence, it is also a book about the potential for care and for freedom.

Zo Samudzi, coauthor of As Black Resistance

Timely and topical, Border and Rule will be of interest to scholars, activists, and general readers. Walia connects variants of ethnonationalism across borders and illustrates how a world order predicated on aggression and displacement harms the most vulnerable among us, a category that includes a significant portion of the global population. Her analysis presents clear and compelling evidence that our current trajectory is unsustainable and offers cogent solutions trained on justice for the victims of endless war and colonial accumulation.

Steven Salaita, author of Inter/Nationalism and Uncivil Rites

Harsha Walias Border and Rule forwards a clear and incisive analysis of the multiple crises facing migrants today amidst the rise of racist nationalisms globally. Her work highlights the entanglements between global capitalism, imperialism, and past and present dynamics of Indigenous genocide and anti-Black governance that are at the heart of the border regime. Border and Rule is a must-read, sure to become a classic, for those of us concerned with building a world premised on freedom of movement, against and beyond the logics of the nation-state.

Robyn Maynard, author of Policing Black Lives

Read Harsha Walia and your understanding of the world will shift. This book is a comprehensive demolition of the borders that divide us and a deft takedown of the myth of the nation. Through a range of case studies, Walia reveals overarching patterns of exclusion and exploitation, crisscrossing the globe to make a brave, deeply learned, and utterly convincing call for radical solidarity. With cries of build a wall ringing out and ethnonationalism gaining steam, Walias critical intervention couldnt be better timed.

Astra Taylor, author of Democracy May Not Exist, but Well Miss It When Its Gone

Confused about how we got to this point? Harsha Walia explains clearly and concisely the multiple forces causing global poverty and displacementand the resistance and organizing around the world. Walia provides a historical analysis of policies that have cut down peoples well-being and driven poverty, violence, terror, and mass migration, and highlights the myriad forms of resistance and organizing that are all too often invisibilized. An excellent explanation of borders, migration, and the exploitative systems that produce both.

Victoria Law, author of Resistance Behind Bars

Harsha Walias decades of visionary leadership in border abolition and migrant justice work, along with her relentless intellectual rigor, is apparent in this immensely important book, arriving right when we need it most. As governments lock down borders, mobilizations against policing reach new peaks, economic crisis worsens, and climate change accelerates, we desperately need this book if we hope to build a nuanced analysis of what we are facing and what kinds of transformation are necessary. Walia deftly exposes the inadequacy of liberal responses to the current crises, paving the way for a deeper understanding of the conditions we are facing and meaningful avenues for resistance. Walias deeply researched, crystal-clear text creates a robust toolbox for comprehending the current crises and assessing resistance strategies. This book is invaluable right now, a must-read for anyone working to dismantle prisons and borders, and to end poverty and war.

Dean Spade, author of Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next)

As communities and social movements scramble to respond to the threat of a globalized far-right against the apocalyptic backdrop of a global pandemic and impending ecological disaster, Harsha Walias Border and Rule reminds us of how we got here. With clinical precision, Walia unravels the genealogies and histories of border militarization, incarceration, and imperialism, laying bare the webs of domination and exploitation that threaten the poor and vulnerable everywhere, from those incarcerated in Australias offshore immigration camps to the victims of drone warfare in Yemen. As we struggle with the cruel symptoms of a global diseaseincarceration,exploitation,occupation,colonialism,environmental collapseWalia picks this web apart, exposing the ways in which these crises interlock and overlap. It is a stark but necessary blueprint to understand. This book is also full of hope. It bears witness to the struggles of those who have survived and continue to resist in spite of merciless repressionthe Indigenous, the enslaved, the exploited, the dispossessed, and the undocumented. It is an urgent and revolutionary call to action that invites us to revisit the problem so that we may dream and fight harder for the world we want.