No abstract

New regimes of labor and mobility control are taking shape across the global north in a militarized form that mimics South Africa's history of apartheid. Apartheid was a South African system of influx and labor control that attempted to manage the "threat" posed by black people by incarcerating them in zones of containment while also enabling the control and policed exploitation of black people as workers, on which the country was dependent. The paper argues, first, that the rise of a system of global apartheid has created a racialized world order and a hierarchical labor market dependent on differential access to mobility; second, that the expansion of systems of resource plunder primarily by agents of the global north into the global south renders localities in the global south unsustainable for ordinary life; and, third, that in response, the global north is massively investing in militarized border regimes to manage the northern movement of people from the global south. The paper argues that "global apartheid" might replace terms such as "transnationalism," "multiculturalism," and "cosmopolitanism" in order to name the structures of control that securitize the north and foster violence in the south, that gate the north and imprison the south, and that create a new militarized form of apartheid on a global level.1. As of this writing, the closure decision has been suspended. 2. This paper is a highly abbreviated version of a book project that develops the arguments, theoretical concepts, and ethnographic examples in much greater detail, including the cases of India, East Asia, and China, which are not discussed here due to space limitations. Furthermore, because the article condenses a broadly comparative and nuanced argument, I am aware that it may appear to reify categories like the "global north" and the "global south." I hope readers will understand that these categories are, of course, internally complex and diverse and that my use of broad-brush tactics here is a heuristic necessity.

Somalia was one of the first states to crumble in the post‐cold war era. This article undresses the image of Somalia as the one true nation‐state in Africa, arguing that the political economy of class and regional dynamics underscored the dissolution of the Somali nation‐state and that the cultural construction of racial stratification configured the patterning of violence. Explaining Somalia's dissolution is a contribution to the anthropological project of theorizing the global disintegration of nation‐states. [violence, nation‐states, class, race, segmentary lineages, Somalia]

This article reviews the creation of Somali Bantu ethnicity as an object of humanitarian intervention during Somalia's civil war. A variety of local, regional and international actors combined to create the ethnonym Somali Bantu for a group of refugees identified as a persecuted minority by the UNHCR and the US government and selected for resettlement in the United States. I track the emergence of the name and its affective dimensions for those who embrace Somali Bantu identity and assess criticisms of its authenticity and legitimacy. The creation of Somali Bantu identity reveals critical dimensions of how race is translated across time and space. Since a fundamental dimension of Somali Bantu identity is based on presumptions of racial difference, the article traces the salience of constructed difference for social hierarchies within Somalia, colonial projects in Somalia, refugee camp life in Kenya, US resettlement policy and diaspora politics in the United States.

No abstract