Border and Rule Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism →

by Harsha Walia

“Colonial coups, capitalist trade agreements, climate change & oppression
[are] the primary driver of displacement from Mexico & Central America”

Harsha Walia’s book Border and Rule has been selected as a finalist for the BC & Yukon Books’ “Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes”, alongside our book TESTIMONIO: Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala (published 2021: Between The Lines).

Rights Action recommends Harsha’s book about forced migrancy and refugee flight across the planet, in our unjust, unequal Nation State system.

Making connections with our work
Over the past 27 years of work in Guatemala and Honduras, Rights Action has denounced the systemic local-to-global injustices, inequalities and violences that force so many people to flee into exile year after year, decade after decade.

In our Forced Migrancy archives (https://rightsaction.org/forced-migrancy-archives), compare and contrast mainstream media coverage in the U.S. and Canada, that will not report on the real underlying causes, with independent reporting that delves into historic and on-going policies and actions of the U.S. and Canadian governments, of global banks, companies and investors, that contribute directly to the underlying causes of forced migrancy and refugee flight from Honduras and Guatemala.

In Border and Rule, Harsha Walia explains that mainstream “representations depict migrants and refugees as the cause of an imagined crisis at the border, when, in fact, mass migration is the outcome of the actual crises of capitalism, conquest, and climate change.”

“A long arc of dirty colonial coups, capitalist trade agreement extracting land and labor, climate change, and enforced oppression is the primary driver of displacement from Mexico and Central America.”

Some reviews
“Harsha Walia offers an unsparing analysis of the violences of forced migration, borders, imperialism and capitalism.” (Mariame Kaba, founder, director of Project NIA)

“This beautifully written book is the most in-depth global analysis of borders and immigration, wars and displacement, imperialism and western white nationalism. Always paying close attention to the people whose lives are wrecked or lost, Walia demands action and offers real solutions.” (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States)

“This book is a comprehensive demolition of the borders that divide us and a deft takedown of the myth of the nation.” (Astra Taylor, author of Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone)

“Harsha Walia explains clearly and concisely the multiple forces causing global poverty and displacement …, an excellent explanation of borders, migration and the exploitative systems that produce both.” (Victoria Law, author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women)

“Every once in a while there comes a book that makes you never see the world the same way again. Harsha Walia’s Border and Rule is such a book, laying bare the border apparatus like no other: its bloody history based on colonial dispossession, Indigenous genocides, anti-Black enslavement, and its contemporary function of maintaining - with militarized enforcement of divisions - a racialized global system of subjugation and exploitation rife with criminal inequalities and ecological catastrophes.” (Todd Miller, author of Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World)

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Rights Action (US & Canada)
Since 1995, Rights Action funds land and environment defense struggles in Guatemala and Honduras; funds justice and human rights defense struggles; and provides emergencies and climate disaster relief funds (Covid19, hurricanes, victims of repression, etc.). Rights Action works to hold accountable the U.S. and Canadian governments, multi-national companies, investors and banks (World Bank, etc.) that help cause and profit from exploitation and poverty, repression and human rights violations, environmental harms, corruption and impunity in Honduras and Guatemala.

Why thousands of Hondurans & Guatemalans flee into exile year after year
The U.S. and Canadian governments, Spain and E.U., the World Bank and global businesses and investors (in the sectors of mining, dams, African palm, sugarcane, bananas, garment “sweatshop” factors, tourism, etc.) maintain full relations with anti-democratic, corrupt, repressive, ‘open-for-global-business’ governments in Honduras and Guatemala, contributing to and benefitting from exploitation and poverty, environmental harms, repression and human rights violations, corruption and impunity.

Act / Stir up the pot / Chip away
Keep sending copies of Rights Action information (and that of other solidarity groups/ NGOs) to family, friends, your networks, politicians and media, asking: ‘Why do our governments, companies and investment firms help cause, benefit from and turn a blind eye to poverty, repression and violence, environmental and health harms that cause the forced migrancy / refugee crisis in Guatemala and Honduras?’

Follow work of and get involved with other solidarity/NGO groups