Thompson's compelling book draws on his own encounters as an ethnographer and fellow traveler to explore the torturous processes of navigating, negotiating, or evading border crossings across southern African and the Horn. Along with capturing the aspirations and often harrowing experiences of a dozen 'ordinary' Africans who have been driven to seek refuge or opportunity in multiple countries, African Border Worlds provides fresh insights into anti-immigrant sentiments in African cities, cross-border trafficking in people and contraband, grass-roots entrepreneurship, and the ongoing importance of social relations in helping folks cope with economic and political precarity. The author also reflects on the value of participatory research in humanizing narratives of displacement and migration, while his endnotes provide extensive references to the wider comparative literature, reminding us that this is not simply an African but a contemporary global story.

Lee Cassanelli, Professor Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania, USA

African Border Worlds is proof that academics can write books with page-turner quality. Thompson takes readers on a roller-coaster ride across five African border worlds in Southern and Eastern Africa. In the front seat are his friends and research interlocutors, who navigate international borders as asylum seekers, return migrants, and traders. Rarely has the anthropology of borders been more alive than in this gripping account, which humanizes the border experience in both painful and hopeful ways.

Tobias Hagmann, University of Basel, Switzerland