Book on South African Border Policies Co-Edited by RCAH’s John Aerni-Flessner

December 8, 2023

  • RCAH associate professor co-edits book that highlights South African border policies.
  • “A range of the borders and boundaries in southern Africa that are impacting people’s lives.”
  • Authors highlight broader impacts of policy and need for reform.

By Maren Case '24

RCAH Associate Professor John Aerni-Flessner has co-edited a book that centers southern Africa in scholarly discourse by reframing debates around nationalism and belonging in southern Africa. Published in early 2024 by Rowman & Littlefield, Migration, Borders, and Borderlands: Making National Identity in Southern African Communities is a work that discusses how border policy impacts the lives of individuals in communities across southern Africa and the effects they have on the everyday life of individuals there. 

Aerni-Flessner’s editorial efforts were a result of years of research and scholarly discovery in the region. 

“I completed this book with my South African collaborators based on research done during my Fulbright year in 2021-2022,” he explained. “It was the culminating project for a grant that we received from South Africa’s National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences [NIHSS].”

The book includes not just the research Aerni-Flessner and his collaborators did on their particular project on the Lesotho and South Africa border, but they also drew in academics from across the southern African region. The authors examined the impacts of borders and border policy on individuals through lenses of gender, policy, economics, history and contemporary realities. The conclusions amplify the need for a border regime that centers humanity above all else.

“We brought a number of people into the process to help them get the publications they needed to help them further their careers and also to get a better range of the different borders and boundaries in southern Africa that are impacting people’s lives,” he noted. “It was an exciting project!”

Aerni-Flessner’s research and publications focus on youth, nationalism, development, borders, and decolonization in Lesotho, as well as histories of the border and borderlands between Lesotho and South Africa. In 2018, his book Dreams for Lesotho: Independence, Foreign Assistance, and Development was published by Notre Dame Press.

Migration, Borders, and Borderlands: Making National Identity in Southern African Communities is available for purchase here. 

 

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