Of xenophobia and citizenship: the politics of exclusion and inclusion in Africa
Résumé
Recent literature on the continent has focused attention on the increasing number
of forms of belonging using different labels: autochthony, nativism, indigeneity,
ethnicity, and in some cases xenophobia. The latter term generally refers to discourses
and practices that are discriminatory towards foreign nationals, but
Wimmer (1997) also sheds light on the existence of deeper political struggles for
the collective goods of the state and the building of structures of legitimacy in
accessing those goods. In many instances, those structures are based on collective
identities and real or fantasized notions of national community (Wimmer 1997:
32). In the African contexts, decolonization struggles have specifically shaped
the type of nation-building enterprises that have emerged in the postcolonial
period (Chipkin 2007). Taking into consideration both this broader theoretical
dimension and the specific historical trajectories of nationalist discourses in the
African contexts, our understanding of xenophobia as discussed in this issue consists
of the systematic situated (in one institution) or cross-cutting construction
that sees strangers as a threat to society, justifying their exclusion and, at times,
their suppression...