On 11 May 2008, residents of Alexandra Township turned violently on their neighbours, launching a string of attacks that, two weeks later, left 60 dead, dozens raped and over a hundred thousand displaced. Most of those killed were from beyond South Africa's borders, but at least a third were citizens who, for reasons of ethnicity or political affiliation, failed to protect their space in the country's urban core. Although not the most severe political violence in South Africa's turbulent past, the 2008 attacks reflect an important moment in the country's post-apartheid, post-authoritarian existence: a moment when the government's legitimacy and the post-apartheid order were called into question. This xenophobic violence made evident cracks in the cohesion of law and society while helping to redefine both. It is these events and subsequent consequences for the ordering of power, population and place that this book explores. Exorcising the demons within makes sense of recent anti-outsider violence by situating it within an extended history of South African statecraft that both produced the conditions for the attacks and has been reshaped by it. Drawing on an interdisciplinary team of expert scholars and on new research, this is the first academic text to fully theorise the events that made global headlines in 2008. Through its subtle, empirical and theoretically informed analysis, the book reshapes discussion of xenophobia and violence in South Africa while injecting local debates into global considerations of the meaning of citizenship and the post-colonial state.

This book draws renewed attention to migration into and within Africa, and to the socio-political consequences of these movements. In doing so, it complements vibrant scholarly and political discussions of migrant integration globally with innovative, interdisciplinary perspectives focused on migration within Africa. It sheds new light on how human mobility redefines the meaning of home, community, citizenship and belonging. The authors ask how people's movements within the continent are forging novel forms of membership while catalysing social change within the communities and countries to which they move and which they have left behind. Original case studies from across Africa question the concepts, actors, and social trajectories dominant in the contemporary literature. Moreover, it speaks to and challenges sociological debates over the nature of migrant integration, debates largely shaped by research in the world's wealthy regions. The text, in part or as a whole, will appeal to students and scholars of migration, development, urban and rural transformation, African studies and displacement.

In 2018, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees documented a record high 71.4 million displaced people around the world. As states struggle with the costs of providing protection to so many people and popular conceptions of refugees have become increasingly politicized and sensationalized, researchers have come together to form regional and global networks dedicated to working with displaced people to learn how to respond to their needs ethically, compassionately, and for the best interests of the global community. Mobilizing Global Knowledge brings together academics and practitioners to reflect on a global collaborative refugee research network. Together, the members of this network have had a wide-ranging impact on research and policy, working to bridge silos, sectors, and regions. They have addressed power and politics in refugee research, engaged across tensions between the Global North and Global South, and worked deeply with questions of practice, methodology, and ethics in refugee research. Bridging scholarship on network building for knowledge production and scholarship on research with and about refugees, Mobilizing Global Knowledge brings together a vibrant collection of topics and perspectives. It addresses ethical methods in research practice, the possibilities of social media for data collection and information dissemination, environmental displacement, transitional justice, and more. This is essential reading for anyone interested in how to create and share knowledge to the benefit of the millions of people around the world who have been forced to flee their homes.

Since the mid-1990s, Western Tanzania has hosted hundreds of thousands of refugees living in massive refugee camps sustained by millions of dollars of humanitarian aid. This title explores the anomalous spaces and practices generated by this influx of people and humanitarian aid, and shows how they have transformed the politics and governmental practices of the region. In more than fourteen months of qualitative and quantitative research, the author found that the refugee influx did not produce the deleterious economic and environmental effects often assumed. Outside the camps, a Tanzanian population long at the margins of their own country's economics and politics became incorporated into systems of power and authority which linked them to Dar es Salaam, central Africa, Geneva, Washington, and the grain farmers of the American Midwest. Amidst the violence and conflict surrounding the camps, they became 'Tanzanian' as never before by exalting the territory, the nation, and a political leadership that delegated responsibility for security and services to others - the United Nations, nongovernmental organisations, and the citizenry. The result was a hybridised regime of power shaped by history, contingency, self-interest and perception - a political form that questions models of rural transformation and the functional basis of the modern nation-state. The Humanitarian Hangover is a resource, not only for scholars of displacement but also for political scientists and sociologists concerned with how displacement and humanitarianism can serve as primary catalysts for social, political and economic change.

On 11 May 2008, residents of Alexandra Township near Johannesburg turned violently on their neighbours, launching a string of attacks that, two weeks later, left 60 dead, dozens raped and over a hundred thousand displaced. Most of those killed were from beyond South Africa's borders, but at least a third were citizens who, for reasons of ethnicity or political affiliation, failed to protect their space in the country's urban core. Although not the most severe political violence in South Africa's turbulent past, the 2008 attacks reflect an important moment in the country's post-apartheid, post-authoritarian existence: a moment when the government's legitimacy and the post-apartheid order were called into question. This xenophobic violence made evident cracks in the cohesion of law and society while helping to redefine both.

It is these events and subsequent consequences for the ordering of power, population and place that this book explores. "Exorcising the Demons Within "makes sense of recent anti-outsider violence by situating it within an extended history of South African statecraft that both produced the conditions for the attacks and has been reshaped by it. Drawing on an interdisciplinary team of expert scholars and on new research, this is the first academic text to fully theorise the events that made global headlines in 2008.

Table of Contents

- Introduction: Exorcising the Demons Within: Xenophobia, Violence, and Statecraft in Contemporary South Africa by Loren Landau

- Media Memory: A Critical Reconstruction of the May 2008 Violence by Tamlyn Monson and Rebecca Arian

- People, Space and Politics: An Exploration of Factors Explaining the 2008 Anti-Foreigner Violence in South Africa by Christine Fauvelle-Aymar and Aurelia Wa Kabwe-Segatti

- Disorder in a Changing Society: Authority and the Micro-Politics of Violence by Jean Pierre Misago

- Xenophobia's Local Genesis: Historical Constructions of "Insiders"/"Outsiders" and the Politics of Exclusion in Alexandra Township by Noor Nieftagodien

- Citizenship, Xenophobic Violence and Law's Dark Side by Jonathan Klaaren

- "Separation Anxiety" The Historical Origins of Xenophobia in the SAPS by Darshan Vigneswaran

- Making the Law, Breaking the Law, Taking the Law into Our Own Hands: Sovereignty and Territorial Control in Three South African Settlements by Tamlyn Monson

- From Defending Migrant Rights to New Political Subjectivities: Gauteng Migrants' Organisations After May 2008 by Tara Polzer and Aurelia Wa Kabwe-Segatti

- Postscript: Demons and Democracy: Positive Values and the Politics of Outsiderness in Contemporary South Africa by Loren Landau