Loren B. Landau

Loren Landau holds an MSc in Development Studies (LSE) and a PhD in Political Science (Berkeley). Widely published in the academic and popular press, he is author of ‘The Humanitarian Hangover: Displacement, Aid, and Transformation in Western Tanzania’ (Wits Press), co-editor of ‘Contemporary Migration to South Africa’ (World Bank), and editor of ‘Exorcising the Demons Within: Xenophobia, Violence and Statecraft in Contemporary South Africa’ (UN University Press). He has served as the chair of the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA), is a member of the South African Immigration Advisory Board and of the editorial boards of International Migration Review, Migration Studies, and the Journal of Refugee Studies.

He is currently exploring comparative perspectives on how mobility is reshaping the politics of rapidly diversifying and expanding communities. Through examinations starting in South Africa and extending across Africa and elsewhere, it will identify and explain emerging forms of political subjectivity, political authority, and governance regimes in spaces characterised by continued mobility. In its initial phase the concentration will be on the continent’s emerging urban estuaries: gateway zones characterised by transience, translocalism and social heterogeneity. As sites often loosely structured by state policy or dominant cultural norms, these estuaries are giving rise to novel modes of political community, institutional configurations, and practical ethics.