Undoing Border Imperialism“Harsha Walia has played a central role in building some of North America’s most innovative, diverse, and effective new movements. That this brilliant organizer and theorist has found time to share her wisdom in this book is a tremendous gift to us all.”—Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine Undoing Border Imperialism combines academic discourse, lived experiences of displacement, and movement-based practices into an exciting new book. By reformulating immigrant rights movements within a transnational analysis of capitalism, labor exploitation, settler colonialism, state building, and racialized empire, it provides the alternative conceptual frameworks of border imperialism and decolonization. Drawing on the author’s experiences in No One Is Illegal, this work offers relevant insights for all social movement organizers on effective strategies to overcome the barriers and borders within movements in order to cultivate fierce, loving, and sustainable communities of resistance striving toward liberation. The author grounds the book in collective vision, with short contributions from over twenty organizers and writers from across North America. Harsha Walia is a South Asian activist, writer, and popular educator rooted in emancipatory movements and communities for over a decade. Praise for Undoing Border Imperialism: “Border imperialism is an apt conceptualization for capturing the politics of massive displacement due to capitalist neoglobalization. Within the wealthy countries, Canada’s No One Is Illegal is one of the most effective organizations of migrants and allies. Walia is an outstanding organizer who has done a lot of thinking and can write—not a common combination. Besides being brilliantly conceived and presented, this book is the first extended work on immigration that refuses to make First Nations sovereignty invisible.”—Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, author of Indians of the Americas and Blood on the Border “Harsha Walia’s Undoing Border Imperialism demonstrates that geography has certainly not ended, and nor has the urge for people to stretch out our arms across borders to create our communities. One of the most rewarding things about this book is its capaciousness—astute insights that emerge out of careful organizing linked to the voices of a generation of strugglers, trying to find their own analysis to build their own movements to make this world our own. This is both a manual and a memoir, a guide to the world and a guide to the organizer's heart.”—Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World “This book belongs in every wannabe revolutionary’s war backpack. I addictively jumped all over its contents: a radical mixtape of ancestral wisdoms to present-day grounded organizers theorizing about their own experiences. A must for me is Walia’s decision to infuse this volume’s fight against border imperialism, white supremacy, and empire with the vulnerability of her own personal narrative. This book is a breath of fresh air and offers an urgently needed movement-based praxis. Undoing Border Imperialism is too hot to be sitting on bookshelves; it will help make the revolution.”—Ashanti Alston, Black Panther elder and former political prisoner |
Contents
What Is Border Imperialism? 35 | |
Cartography of NOII 95 | |
Epilogue Syed Khalid Hussan 277 | |
Notes 285 | |
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Common terms and phrases
accessed July accessed September activists alliances analysis antiauthoritarian anticapitalist anticolonial antioppression Ashanti Alston Ask Don’t Tell border imperialism building campaign Canada Canadian capitalism capitalist challenge citizenship Coast Salish Coast Salish territories corporate create criminal cultural decolonization deportation detainees detention centers displaced economic empire exploitation feminist fight gender global grassroots hierarchies illegal impacted incarceration Indigenous Coast Salish Indigenous communities Indigenous lands International Islamophobia Japanese Canadians labor leadership live migrant and undocumented migrant detention migrant justice movements migrant workers migrants of color mobilizing Muslim Naomi Klein neoliberal Network NOII groups NOII-Montreal NOII-Toronto NOII’s Nonstatus Algerians oppression organizing Palestinian people’s political precarious precarity prefigurative prison queer Racial Profiling racism radical refugees resistance security certificates Secwepemc self-determination September 12 settler colonialism social movements solidarity state’s strategies structures struggles tactics Toronto undocumented migrants undocumented workers Vancouver violence Western Wet’suwet’en white supremacy women of color