Books by Catherine Besteman

Catherine Besteman offers a sweeping theorization of the ways in which countries from the global North are reproducing South Africa's apartheid system on a worldwide scale to control the mobility and labor of people from the global South.

"Besteman's well-written and important book is a fine example of how careful scholarship can expose the realities behind widely held beliefs."-Choice

In Making Refuge Catherine Besteman follows the lives of a group of Somali Bantu refugees over the course of three decades, from their pre-civil war homes and terrible experiences in Kenyan refugee camps, to their recent resettlement in the struggling former mill town of Lewiston, Maine.

The essays in this book address the inter-relationship of power, politics, and violence, examining why the political process of managing power within states sometimes becomes physically violent.

Offers a view into the lives of ordinary South Africans more than ten years after the end of apartheid, with the promises of the democracy movement remaining largely unfulfilled. This work explores the emotional and personal aspects of the transition to black majority rule by homing in on questions of love, family, and community.