Since 2009, several unions of Congolese retailers have demanded the implementation of a 1973 law forbidding foreigners from operating small businesses and limiting their access to retail. Seemingly similar mobilizations have been observed elsewhere in Africa (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa), but the Congolese situation remains undocumented to date. The current discursive patterns and social practices that have emerged from this mobilization call for a socio-political enquiry, interrogating their xenophobic undertones but also viewing them in relation to the distribution of power and emerging political subjectivities of post-Mobutuist urban contexts. Based on extensive fieldwork, combining ethnographic research with interviews with key informants, conducted in Kinshasa between 2010 and 2012, this study focuses on mobilization techniques, the web of representations they give rise to, and political actors involved in or resisting the movement. It reveals a complex type of nationalistic discourse that draws on historical and contemporary global sources, while also being influenced by Congo's ambivalent relationship to national identity in the post-Mobutuist period. The non-distinct xenophobic undertones of the discourse, while mostly directed towards Asians and Lebanese, also result in the systematic targeting of West African business operators. Yet, despite often xenophobic and virulent rhetoric, interactions between Congolese and foreign traders have mostly remained characterized by ‘peaceful coexistence’. Those Congolese and foreigners who have chosen to resist injunctions to exclude the latter from economic spaces thus directly question national citizenship as the main basis for political and economic membership in the city of Kinshasa.

In the last three decades, the politics of indigeneity have led to discrimination against and marginalization of non-indigenes as well as numerous violent conflicts between indigenes and non-indigenes in Nigeria. This discrimination, which is based on a localized place of belonging, has today become bureaucratized: local governments produce ‘certificates of indigene’ to identify the origin of their holders. This article looks at the bureaucratic machinery of issuing certificates of origin in two local governments of Oyo State (in the south-west) and the everyday encounters between users and bureaucrats that cannot be reduced to practices of corruption. It looks at the complicated and ambivalent process of identifying a ‘true indigene’; this process is supposed to strengthen local citizenship but it also contributes to the daily functioning of the state and is largely accepted by the majority as part of the state's ‘insidious gentleness’. The article also seeks to understand why official discrimination against non-indigenes is poorly contested locally by assessing the role of these documents in accessing public employment, university places and basic services, and examining whether areas inhabited by non-indigenes are perceived as being neglected or abandoned by the state. Currently, discrimination policies are implemented unequally and in many instances client–patron relationships help sidestep these policies.

Ongata Rongai, a rapidly growing, ethnically heterogeneous community on Nairobi's urban periphery, has remained remarkably convivial in a country so frequently defined by conflicts over land and belonging. Bolstered by a distinct set of political logics and social practices, many of the site's multi-ethnic residents overtly reject the validity of ethnic violence and politics with reference to an explicitly articulated universalist inclusivity rarely seen in Kenya. Locally described as ‘being cosmo’, this distinct political rhetoric and emerging subjectivity has its roots in the mixed ethnic origins of its leaders, the history of land acquisition, and xenophobic persecution and displacements elsewhere in the country. More specifically, the evolution of this conviviality in the shadow of conflict has been driven by the interests of ‘half-caste’ political elites and increasingly established Kikuyu landowners. Together they draw on and reinforce a foundation myth of fair land transfers to promote peace and their own economic and electoral ambitions. The result is a vernacular and spatialized cosmopolitanism that fosters localized ethnic blindness. Its success depends on demonizing discourses of indigeneity while embracing ideas of ethnic homelands beyond the city. By acting as a foil to a growing literature on the ethnicization of land and space in Africa, this article demonstrates the need to understand spatially constructed subjectivities as responses to supra-local social and political practice.

Since the mass violence committed by Katangese against non-natives – mostly Kasaians – in the early 1990s in the Katanga province (Democratic Republic of Congo), Katangese and Kasaians have eschewed subjects relating to the past violence in their daily interactions. However, during the November 2011 presidential and legislative election period, expressions linked to the past violence, such as ‘This time, you will go back home by foot’ or ‘This time, you will not drive us out. We will fight’, were common. The paper documents and analyses how Kasaians and Katangese dealt with the memory of the violence during this election period, in Likasi and Kolwezi, two cities particularly affected by violence. Based on qualitative fieldwork research conducted between November 2011 and January 2012, the paper understands the November 2011 election as being a crisis situation informed by the fear of a violent outbreak in the event of the victory of Etienne Tshisekedi, leader of the opposition and a Kasaian. This crisis situation led to the simplification and polarization of collective identities: whether friend, neighbour or colleague, a person was perceived only as a Kasaian or a Katangese. In such a context, routine practices of coexistence based on self-censorship and avoidance tended to disappear.

North-east Nigeria is an area of great ethno-linguistic diversity and religious pluralism, with Islam and Christianity both having a strong presence. The majority of the population is Muslim but there is also a substantial indigenous Christian minority, who form a majority in some local government areas. This paper draws on fieldwork by the authors in two north-eastern states, Bauchi and Gombe, to explore why, despite comparable religious demographics, there are marked differences in the levels of collective violence experienced in the two states. Although ethno-religious violence has increased across northern Nigeria since the 1980s, some areas have been more affected than others. To understand why this is, it is necessary to place ethnic and religious differences in their local historical and political contexts. This paper compares Gombe and Bauchi and argues that, although there are complaints of marginalization among different groups in both cases, Gombe State has developed a more inclusive system of government and local conflict management than Bauchi State. We explore what accounts for this difference in the articulation and management of belonging and whether the contrast is significant enough to explain differential levels of violence. In doing so, we consider how inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations have been shaped historically in the two cases and compare current forms of collective mobilization, considering different social and political spaces within each state. The paper also briefly outlines the impacts of the radical insurgent group Jama'at ahl al-sunna li'l-da'wa wa'l-jihad, nicknamed Boko Haram, in Bauchi and Gombe states.

In contrast to the tolerant and largely peaceful ‘living politics' of informal settlements, as embodied by the social movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, this article considers a darker side of squatter politics: ‘xenophobic’ mobilization. I show how the historical stratification of citizenship in South Africa remains spatially embedded in longstanding informal settlements, where distinctive repertoires of collective action have been shaped by a (still unfinished) history of struggle for inclusion. Using archival research and interviews conducted in the informal settlements of Atteridgeville, Gauteng, I show how the continuing struggle for equal citizenship draws on shared experiences of mundane hardship and collective labour, giving rise to social distance between established local squatters and politically indifferent foreign newcomers. At times of protest, this polarity is concentrated by and converges with familiar practices of insurgent citizenship, creating a context for mobilization against foreigners. In this sense, ‘xenophobic’ mobilization may be seen to articulate a claim for inclusion by structurally excluded ‘citizens', rather than an exclusionary claim by those who already belong. The article provides a useful counterpoint to readings of ‘xenophobic’ violence that focus on the role of elite discourses, instrumental leaders or crude racial identities in shaping such mobilization.

Several recent publications have explored the African National Congress's (ANC's) external links during South Africa's apartheid years. The following four texts offer an insight into the very different personal and methodological approaches that have so far shaped attempts to understand this aspect of the ANC's struggle. The section starts with a review of Stephen Ellis's recent book External Mission: the ANC in exile, 1960–1990 by Hugh Macmillan, who argues that Ellis overemphasizes the relationship between the ANC and the South African Communist Party (SACP). In a response to this review, Stephen Ellis justifies his approach by pointing to the importance of interpretation for the production of history, but also by referring to the different networks and resources, both in South Africa and beyond, on which he and Macmillan were able to draw. A review of Hugh Macmillan's new book The Lusaka Years: the ANC in exile in Zambia, 1963 to 1994 by Arianna Lissoni follows. Lissoni agrees with the author that the debate about the ANC in exile must be understood in the context of contemporary disaffection with South Africa's ruling party. Emphasizing the specificity of the Zambian experience, she welcomes Macmillan's focus on the multiplicity of experiences in exile as potentially opening new avenues for further study and reflection on the ANC. Finally, Mariya Kurbak's consideration of Irina Filatova and Apollon Davidson's The Hidden Thread: Russia and South Africa in the Soviet era explains that the authors' close understanding of Russian–South African relations enables them to illuminate the previously hidden importance of the Soviet Union in the history of South Africa and the ANC.