Introduction of Xenophobia and Citizenship: the Everyday Politics of Exclusion and Inclusion in Africa

International audienc

Human Development Impacts of Migration: South Africa Case Study

Controls on human mobility and efforts to undermine them continue to shape South Africa’s politics, economy, and society. Despite the need for improved policy responses to human mobility, reform is hindered by lack of capacity, misinformation, and anti-migrant sentiments within and outside of government. This report outlines these trends and tensions by providing a broad overview of the limited demographic and socio-economic data available on migration to and within South Africa. Doing so highlights the spatialised aspects of human mobility, trends centred on and around the country’s towns and cities. It also finds significant development potential in international migrants’ skills and entrepreneurialism. By enhancing remittances and trade, non-nationals may also expand markets for South African products and services. Despite these potential benefits, there are severe obstacles to immigration reform. These include a renewed South African populism; the influence of a strong anti-trafficking lobby; a European Union (EU) agenda promoting stricter border controls; poor implementation capacity; and endemic corruption among police and immigration officials. There are different, but equally significant problems in reforming frameworks governing domestic mobility including perceptions that in-migration is an inherent drain on municipal budgets. Recognising these limitations, the report concludes with three recommendations. (1) A conceptual reconsideration of the divisions between documented and undocumented migrants; between voluntary and forced migrants; and between international and domestic migration. (2) An analytical respatialisation in future planning and management scenarios involving regional and local bodies in evaluating, designing and implementing policy. (3) To situate migration and its management within global debates over governance and development and for ‘migration mainstreaming’ into all aspects of governance. The success of any of these initiatives will require better data, the skills to analyse that data, and the integration of data into planning processes.migration, urbanisation, governance, South Africa, policy reform, capabilities

Xenophobic Violence and the Manufacture of Difference in Africa

Over the past decade, the exploration of xenophobia, particularly of the violence xenophobia may unleash and its related effects on citizenship outside of Western Europe, has been limited. If there is a large body of research on autochthony and xenophobic practices in a number of African countries, much less is known on the outcomes of xenophobic violence and how it reshapes the making of authority, the self-definition of groups making claims to ownership over resources and the boundaries of citizenship. Analyses of collective violence in Africa have devoted much attention to conflict over land ownership, civil wars or vigilantism while quantitative studies have placed much emphasis on putative difference between labelled groups in the production of “ethnic violence”. In this issue, we understand autochthony, nativism and indigeneity as local concepts used by actors in situations of xenophobia. Xenophobia is consequently understood as the systematic construction of strangers as a threat to the local or national community justifying their exclusion and sometimes their suppression. Drawing on extensive empirical research undertaken over the past four years across three countries (Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa), this issue intends to offer renewed analysis on the understanding of xenophobic violence focusing on local and urban scales using historical and ethnographic methods. Focusing on micro-level qualitative research helps avoid reflecting a monolithic image of the “state”, “society” or “community” and underestimating internal struggles among elites in the production of violence; it also helps contesting analyses which exclusively look at violence inflicted on behalf of a group claiming to share an exclusive identity; it eventually allows to reconsider how processes of violent exclusion are contested, disputed, ignored or fought against by a number of actors

Displacement and difference in Lubumbashi

Signs on the outskirts of the second largest city in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) welcome visitors to ‘the city of peace’. Lubumbashi has a reputation as a haven of tolerance in a violent nation but how are displaced people treated

Migrations en Afrique australe

En retraçant les transformations majeures du cadre migratoire dans l’Afrique australe post-apartheid, cet article propose de situer les enjeux économiques qui structurent aujourd’hui la réflexion sur la dynamique migration-développement, afin de mieux comprendre les choix politiques qui contraignent les gouvernements de ces nouveaux eldorados que sont devenus l’Afrique du Sud, le Botswana et la Namibie. Terre d’exil, de transit et d’installation, la pointe sud de l’Afrique australe prend aujourd’hui pleinement conscience des défis liés à son entrée dans le monde. Face à un cosmopolitisme tour à tour revendiqué et honni, les gouvernements de ces trois pays progressent, selon des modalités différenciées, dans la voie de constructions nationales qui ne pourront faire l’économie d’une réflexion plus large sur l’étranger.In retracing the major changes in migration in post-apartheid Southern Africa, this paper aims to position the economic issues that currently structure discussion on the migration-development dynamics, in order to better understand the political choices constraining the governments of South Africa, Botswana and Namibia, the new lands of opportunity. The tip of Southern Africa – a place of exile, transit and settlement – is now becoming fully aware of the challenges linked to its entry into the world. Confronted by a cosmopolitanism which is alternately claimed and hated, the governments of these three countries are following, under different patterns, nation-building paths that cannot overlook serious reflection on the world at large

“We Offer the Whole of Africa Here!”. African Curio Traders and the Marketing of a Global African Image in Post-apartheid South African Cities1

Based on a two-year fieldwork in and around Johannesburg, this paper contends that the emergence of "African markets" in the post-apartheid urban landscapes filled the niches created by the production of commodified images of the country and, by extension, the continent. The analysis focuses on the creative process at work around the identification and multi-layered reading of a "cosmopolitan" African iden­tity by different groups of actors (South African municipal authorities, retail private actors and migrant traders). It tries to show how this process has fulfilled actors' immediate and contrasted needs but has not necessarily led to countering negative clichés on African migration in the long run. It thus tries to make use of the theoreti­cal framework of the notion of ethnic entrepreneurship in its application to the South African context. The paper documents the practices and activities of the African curio trade in South African cities, the products sold, the trade networks and the imaginaries on which the perceptions of migrants, market managers and municipal councillors rely and in turn continue to fuel. After painting the specific cultural and political context of the South African tourism industry and offering a brief overview of the dissemination of new trade and migration networks towards and within South African cities, the paper finally unpacks the imagery of Africa that is conveyed to South Africans and international publics as well as its genealogy.À partir d'un travail de terrain de deux ans dans et aux alentours de Johannesburg, cet article montre comment l'émergence de « marchés africains », dans les paysages urbains post-apartheid, est venue combler une niche créée par la pro­duction d'images commercialisables du pays, et par extension, du continent. L'ana­lyse se concentre sur le processus créatif à l'œuvre autour de l'identification et des lectures multiples d'une identité africaine « cosmopolite » par différents groupes d'acteurs (les municipalités sud-africaines, le secteur privé et les commerçants migrants). On tente de montrer comment ce processus a servi les attentes immédiates et contrastées des acteurs mais n'a pas nécessairement conduit à renverser durable­ment les clichés négatifs sur la migration africaine. Le cadre théorique de la notion d'entrepreneur ethnique est ainsi appliqué au contexte sud-africain. Cet article docu­mente les pratiques et les activités de la vente d'objets artisanaux africains dans les villes sud-africaines, les produits vendus, les réseaux commerçants et les imaginaires sur lesquels les perceptions des migrants, des gérants de marché et des conseillers municipaux reposent et à leur tour contribuent à alimenter. Après avoir décrit le contexte culturel et politique de l'industrie touristique sud-africaine et donné un aperçu de l'étendue des nouveaux réseaux commerçants et migratoires inter et intra- urbains, cet article étudie l'imagerie de l'Afrique qui est véhiculée par les publics sud-africains et internationaux et par sa généalogie

Human Development Impacts of Migration: South Africa Case Study

Controls on human mobility and efforts to undermine them continue to shape South Africa’s politics, economy, and society. Despite the need for improved policy responses to human mobility, reform is hindered by lack of capacity, misinformation, and anti-migrant sentiments within and outside of government. This report outlines these trends and tensions by providing a broad overview of the limited demographic and socio-economic data available on migration to and within South Africa. Doing so highlights the spatialised aspects of human mobility, trends centred on and around the country’s towns and cities. It also finds significant development potential in international migrants’ skills and entrepreneurialism. By enhancing remittances and trade, non-nationals may also expand markets for South African products and services. Despite these potential benefits, there are severe obstacles to immigration reform. These include a renewed South African populism; the influence of a strong anti-trafficking lobby; a European Union (EU) agenda promoting stricter border controls; poor implementation capacity; and endemic corruption among police and immigration officials. There are different, but equally significant problems in reforming frameworks governing domestic mobility including perceptions that in-migration is an inherent drain on municipal budgets. Recognising these limitations, the report concludes with three recommendations. (1) A conceptual reconsideration of the divisions between documented and undocumented migrants; between voluntary and forced migrants; and between international and domestic migration. (2) An analytical respatialisation in future planning and management scenarios involving regional and local bodies in evaluating, designing and implementing policy. (3) To situate migration and its management within global debates over governance and development and for ‘migration mainstreaming’ into all aspects of governance. The success of any of these initiatives will require better data, the skills to analyse that data, and the integration of data into planning processes

Desplazamiento y diferencias en Lubumbashi

Los carteles a las afueras de la segunda ciudad más grande de la República Democrática del Congo le dan a uno la bienvenida a la “ciudad de la paz”. Lubumbashi goza de la reputación de ser un oasis de tolerancia en una nación violenta. No obstante, ¿cómo se trata en esta ciudad a los desplazados?

Of Xenophobia and Citizenship. The Politics of Exclusion and Inclusion in Africa

International audienc