Immigration and the State of Exception: Security and Sovereignty in East and Southern Africa

Abstract

The imperative to protect national territory from the unplanned movements of people across borders has generated exceptional, often extra-legal, responses from countries throughout the world. Although intended to reassert state sovereignty, little is known about such exceptionalism's lasting effects on the nature of political authority and territorial control. Through a comparison of Johannesburg, South Africa and Western Tanzania's Kasulu District, this article demonstrates that measures designed to alienate or liquidate non-national populations may be broadly popular, but the subterranean and extra-legal practices they engender can criminalise the state and prevent leaders from re-establishing a normal legal order. These effects depend on the measures employed while being conditioned by pre-existing practices of state power. In Tanzania, the creation of temporary camps in response to a massive influx of refugees has generated spatially delimited extra-legality that is unlikely to threaten sovereignty. Amidst South Africa's post-apartheid transitions, emerging networks of corruption stemming from exceptionalism are challenging the liberal state's mandate and creating incentive systems that leaders can no longer control. These findings illustrate the significance of immigration, humanitarianism, and migration management for the exercise of political power and suggest that exceptionalism not only threatens democratic principles, but also may undermine the sovereignty it is designed to protect.