Borderlines: Why Xenophobia Endures in an Interconnected World - Softcover

Jooste, Charl

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798185546512

Publisher: Independently published, 2026

Synopsis

A man's market stall burns in South Africa. A woman steps off a rubber boat onto a Greek beach. Neither of them chose the forces that made them targets, but both became symbols the moment they arrived.

Why does xenophobia persist, and even intensify, in a world more connected than any in human history? Borderlines traces the fear of the stranger across every inhabited continent, from nineteenth-century immigration riots to twenty-first-century WhatsApp lynchings, from Rwanda's genocide to Germany's fifty-year struggle over who counts as German, from Facebook's role in ethnic violence in Myanmar to a football pitch in Israel where researchers measured, scientifically, what actually reduces prejudice.

Drawing on psychology, economics, media research, and political science, this book makes a single, evidence-driven argument: xenophobia is not a mystery, and it is not fate. It is the product of identifiable mechanisms: ancient in-group psychology, economic anxiety misdirected at the wrong target, media systems that profit from fear, politicians who have learned migration is an unusually effective electoral weapon, and legal systems that sometimes protect and sometimes enable exclusion.

Inside, you'll find:

• Why the human brain sorts strangers into threats within a fraction of a second, and why that reflex predates every nation-state on Earth


• The real economic research on whether migrants "take jobs" (the answer is more interesting than either side of the debate admits)


• How a single Facebook rumor in Sri Lanka became a riot in seventy-two hours, and why the correction never caught up


• Case studies of societies that changed course: Rwanda's reconciliation courts, Germany's decades-long path to inclusion, and Colombia's rapid integration of 2.8 million Venezuelan migrants


• A practical, evidence-based playbook for what actually works, for policymakers, civic organizations, and anyone trying to understand the news

Balanced, global in scope, and grounded in research rather than ideology, Borderlines is for readers of Sapiens, Strangers in Their Own Land, and Factfulness: anyone who wants to understand one of the defining tensions of our era, not just react to it.

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798185546512
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 136