Making Nations Creating Strangers

This book explores the instrumental manipulation of citizenship and narrowing definitions of national-belonging which refract political struggles in Zimbabwe, Cote d'Ivoire, Cameroon, Somalia, Tanzania, and South Africa, where conflicts are legitimated through claims of exclusionary nationhood and redefinitions of citizenship.

Africa, it is often said, is suffering from a crisis of citizenship. At the heart of the contemporary debates this apparent crisis has provoked lie dynamic relations between the present and the past, between political theory and political practice, and between legal categories and lived experience. Yet studies of citizenship in Africa have often tended to foreshorten historical time and privilege the present at the expense of the deeper past. Citizenship, Belonging, and Political Community in Africa provides a critical reflection on citizenship in Africa by bringing together scholars working with very different case studies and with very different understandings of what is meant by citizenship. By bringing historians and social scientists into dialogue within the same volume, it argues that a revised reading of the past can offer powerful new perspectives on the present, in ways that might also indicate new paths for the future. The project collects the works of up-and-coming and established scholars from around the globe. Presenting case studies from such wide-ranging countries as Sudan, Mauritius, South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, and Ethiopia, the essays delve into the many facets of citizenship and agency as they have been expressed in the colonial and postcolonial eras. In so doing, they engage in exciting ways with the watershed book in the field, Mahmood Mamdani’s Citizen and Subject. Contributors: Samantha Balaton-Chrimes, Frederick Cooper, Solomon M. Gofie, V. Adefemi Isumonah, Cherry Leonardi, John Lonsdale, Eghosa E.Osaghae, Ramola Ramtohul, Aidan Russell, Nicole Ulrich, Chris Vaughan, and Henri-Michel Yéré.

Nationalism has generated violence, bloodshed, and genocide, as well as patriotic sentiments that encourage people to help fellow citizens and place public responsibilities above personal interests. This study explores the contradictory character of African nationalism as it unfolded over decades of Tanzanian history in conflicts over public policies concerning the rights of citizens, foreigners, and the nation's Asian racial minority. These policy debates reflected a history of racial oppression and foreign domination and were shaped by a quest for economic development, racial justice, and national self-reliance.

Drawing on an ethnography of Sherbro coastal communities in Sierra Leone, this book analyses the politics and practice of identity through the lens of the reciprocal relations that exist between socio-ethnic groups. Anaïs Ménard examines the implications of the social arrangement that binds landlords and strangers in a frontier region, the Freetown Peninsula, characterized by high degrees of individual mobility and social interactions. She showcases the processes by which Sherbro identity emerged as a flexible category of practice, allowing individuals the possibility to claim multiple origins and perform ethnic crossovers while remaining Sherbro.

Thirty-six essays by a team of leading scholars providing a global coverage of the history of nationalism in its different aspects - its ideas, its sentiments, and its politics.

From the historical movements of enslaved Africans to the Americas to newer migrations of Africans to spaces like Belgium and France, experiences of blackness on a global stage reflect themes of negotiation, persecution, isolation, unification, remembrance, and much more. Yet, it is impossible to minimize the complex experiences that make up the African diaspora throughout the world, as diasporic communities face a range of struggles, specifically related to the politics of identity and connections to the continent of Africa itself. This book is thus a timely and much-needed exploration of the intricate nature of culture and life in the African diaspora. It examines identities, collectivities, and relationships with Africa and Africans. It helps fill a gap in the field by illuminating the complex experiences of blackness in a manner that motivates readers to grapple with the nuances diaspora studies and African issues on a global stage. This book balances conceptualizations of diaspora by engaging with scholars exploring old African diasporas, newer migrations, and even regional movement within the continent of Africa itself. More importantly, the chronological breadth of the volume allows readers to explore historical matters alongside comparable contemporary issues as a way of assessing continuities and the ways in which communities continue to grapple with institutional racism, political marginalization, and negotiations between tradition and modernity on a global stage. Furthermore, the interdisciplinary nature of the book offers diverse approaches for robust engagement with African diaspora studies.

Citizenship in Africa provides a comprehensive exploration of nationality laws in Africa, placing them in their theoretical and historical context. It offers the first serious attempt to analyse the impact of nationality law on politics and society in different African states from a trans-continental comparative perspective. Taking a four-part approach, Parts I and II set the book within the framework of existing scholarship on citizenship, from both sociological and legal perspectives, and examine the history of nationality laws in Africa from the colonial period to the present day. Part III considers case studies which illustrate the application and misapplication of the law in practice, and the relationship of legal and political developments in each country. Finally, Part IV explores the impact of the law on politics, and its relevance for questions of identity and 'belonging' today, concluding with a set of issues for further research. Ambitious in scope and compelling in analysis, this is an important new work on citizenship in Africa.