Photo of Xolani Tshabalala

Xolani Tshabalala

It is tempting to see state borders only as visible barriers – like the barbed wire or Trump’s “tall, beautiful wall”. Borders can also be imagined as mobile, perceptive entities – always barring, filtering, and reshaping human mobility everywhere.

Borders that shift shape 

I do research on Southern African cross-border informality from the perspective of critical border studies. I am also interested in African migrant solidarity movements in the context of a retreating post-colonial state.

I joined the Institute for Research on Migration Ethnicity and Society – REMESO, at Linköping University, in 2012 as a PhD candidate. Prior to joining REMESO, I worked at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in Pretoria, South Africa, as a Researcher and Project Manager.

My skills and experience are in research project management, MSM sexual health and counterculture, migrant resistance movements and solidarities, and undocumented cross-border mobility and livelihood strategies.

As a Riksbankens Jubileumsfond postdoctoral fellow, I am currently working on the governance of cross-border mobility in Southern Africa in the context of the corona global pandemic.

Publications

Dissertation

Cover of publication 'Hyenas of the Limpopo: The Social Politics of Undocumented Movement Across South Africa’s Border with Zimbabwe'
Xolani Tshabalala (2017)

2025

Xolani Tshabalala (2025) Critical Sociology, Vol. 51, p. 55-69 (Article in journal)

2023

Xolani Tshabalala (2023) Migration, Borders and Borderlands: Making National Identities in Southern African Communities, p. 69-92 (Chapter in book)

2019

Xolani Tshabalala, Milena Belloni (2019) Forum on Crime and Society, Vol. 10, p. 25-49 (Article in journal)
Xolani Tshabalala (2019) Journal of Borderlands Studies, Vol. 34, p. 433-450 (Article in journal)

2017

Xolani Tshabalala (2017)

Research environment

Organisation