Abstract
Whilst the notion of migration in the Southern African region underscores the permeability of borders, its historiography has been compartmentalised in academic circles and, as a result, has failed to capture the complexity of human mobility in its various forms. Here, we must consider the often neglected relations between multiple communities (e.g. different migrant groups) in the process of (un)settlement but also bear in mind that people co-exist and interact with a myriad of other elements themselves in circulation, from objects and merchandise to non-human actors. Building on these premises, this introduction introduces important themes of the vestiges of migration in post-independence Southern Africa. Drawing on numerous debates around the political economy of migration as crisis, identity formations, citizen and belonging, this introduction addresses how critical border-making and border-crossing processes have been, and still are, shaping trajectories of movements in Southern Africa.
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Notes
- 1.
By southern Africa we mean the SADC region comprising 13 countries of the Southern region [i.e. South Africa, Angola, Lesotho, Swaziland, Tanzania, Botswana, Mozambique, Malawi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Seychelles Zambia and Zimbabwe and Namibia (Arango 2004)].
- 2.
Freedom Charter as adopted at the Congress of the People, Kliptown 1955. http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?is=72 (retrieved 20 May, 2015).
- 3.
Fanon, Frantz (1963) The Wretched of The Earth, Grove Press; Andreasson, Stefan (2010) Africa’s Development Impasse: Rethinking The Political Economy of Transformation, Zed Books; Saul, John (2014) A Flawed Freedom: Rethinking Southern African Liberation: UCT Press; Melber, Henning (2004) Limits to Liberation in Southern Africa: The Unfinished Business of Democratic Consolidation, HSRC Press: Cape Town.
- 4.
Cited in Landau (2014, p. 229).
- 5.
Mhone, G. C. (2001, September). Enclavity and constrained labour absorptive capacity in Southern African economies. In Draft paper prepared for the discussion at the UNRISD meeting on ‘The Need to Rethink Development Economics’ (pp. 7–8).
- 6.
There has been increased South–South migration in contrast to the usual South–North Migration. See Crush, J., & Ramachandran, S. (2010). Xenophobia, international migration and development. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 11(2), 209–228.
- 7.
Trushen, Merideth (ed) (2010) African Women: A Political Economy, Palgrave: London.
- 8.
Data derived from the new UN dataset: Trends in International Migrant Stock The 2015 Revision.
- 9.
The assertion here is that even though the notions of ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ are conceptually and heuristically objectionable on the grounds that they are rooted in dichotomous language that reproduces power differentials between diverse actors and sites around the world, terms like logics similar to those described by world system and dependency theory in the 1960s and 1970s are useful operational concepts in explaining the multiple spheres of human activity in the region of Southern Africa. The idea of world system (WS) is advanced by Immanuel Wallerstein as a study of neo-mercantilism in a global context that organises itself in the form of centre–periphery relations between economically and politically powerful and hinterland nations of capitalist world system. The concept of WS, however, emulates Wallerstein’s concept of knowledge in the framework of unity in space and time context, which is his idea of historicism. Our reading of the WS exposes the economic, social and political agency of South Africa as a codified economic hub in Southern Africa. Our take on the position South Africa occupies in the region acknowledges that on average most Southern Africans move to the country of South Africa in search of economic and social opportunities.
- 10.
For example, the discourse makes hardly any mention of South Africa’s de facto 75-year-long colonial rule of Namibia which experienced colonialism from South Africa and the regional implications of that empire building within the migration debate.
- 11.
Business Day Live, ‘Uhuru Kenyatta Appeals for The Opening of Borders’ (May 19 2015).
- 12.
16 Ferguson, Susan and Mcnally, David (2015) ‘Precarious Migrants: Gender, Race and the Social Reproduction of a Global Working Class’, Socialist Register, Volume 5.
- 13.
17 Landau, Loren B, (2004) ‘Myths and Decision in South African Migration and Research’, Paper Presented at the African Migration Alliance Workshop, 10–11 March 2005, Pretoria, South Africa. http://sarpn.org/documents/d0001305/P1543-Migration-Myth_Wits_Nov2004.pdf
- 14.
Castles, Stephen., Hass De, Hein and Miller, J Mark (2013) The Age of Migration: Internal Population Movements in the Modern World: Palgrave McMillan.
- 15.
Neocosmos, Michael (2010) From ‘Foreign Natives’ to ‘Native Foreigners’: Explaining Xenophobia in Post-Apartheid South Africa, CODESRIA: Dakar; Koltz, Audie (2013) Migration and Identity in South Africa, 1890–2010, Cambridge University Press; Loren Landau (ed.) (2011) Exorcising the Demons Within: Xenophobia, Violence and Statecraft in Contemporary South Africa, Wits University Press: Johannesburg (especially the introductory chapter).
- 16.
Chipkin, Ivor (2007) Do South Africans Exist?: Nationalism, Democracy and the ‘identity of the People’: Wits University Press: Johannesburg, also see Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J (2007) Do ‘Zimbabweans’ Exist?: Trajectories of Nationalism, National Identity Formation and Crisis in a Post-Colonial State, Peter Lang: London and also Raftopoulos, Brian and Mlambo, Alois (eds.) (2009) Becoming Zimbabwe: A History from the Pre-Colonial to 2008, Weaver Press: Harare.
- 17.
See for example Harvey David (2005), A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford University Press, and also Stiglitz, Joseph (2002) Globalisation and Its Discontents, New York. Harvey’s (2005) work is attentive to the spatial diversity of neoliberalism, emphasising its variegated forms from a materialist analysis that locates the shifts in capitalist social relations and the crisis of accumulation (i.e. accumulation by dispossession) marked by the perpetuation of inequality, to the class critique of the neoliberal project that is meant to ‘restore’ class power at both the global and national arenas. Harvey (2005) argues that ‘accumulation by dispossession entails a very different set of practices from accumulation through the expansion of wage labour in industry and agriculture. Dispossession entails the loss of rights, dignity, sustainable ecological practices, environmental rights, and the life, as the basis for a unified oppositional politics’ (Harvey, p. 178).
- 18.
Ferguson, Susan and Mcnally, David (2015) ‘Precarious Migrants: Gender, Race and the Social Reproduction of a Global Working Class’, Socialist Register, Volume 51.
- 19.
Moore, David (2003) ‘Zimbabwe’s Triple Crisis: Primitive Accumulation, Nation-State Formation and Democratisation in the Age of Neo-liberalism’, African Studies Quarterly¸ Volume 7, Issues 2&3.
- 20.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. (2009), Africa for Africans or Africa for “Natives” Only? “New Nationalism” and Nativism in Zimbabwe and South Africa, in: Africa Spectrum, 44, 1, 61–78.
- 21.
Fanon, Frantz (1963) The Wretched of the Earth, Grove Press: New York.
- 22.
Massey, Douglas S (2010) ‘The Political Economy of Migration in an Era of Globalization’. pp. 25–43 in Samuel Martinez, ed., International Migration and Human Rights: The Global Repercussions of US Policy. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- 23.
Bond, Patrick and Manyanya, Masimba (2002) Zimbabwe’s Plunge: Exhausted Nationalism, Neoliberalism and The Search for Social Justice: UKZN Press; also Bond, Patrick (1989) Uneven Zimbabwe: A Study of Finance, Development and Underdevelopment , Africa World Press; on the question of ‘nation-state’ formation see Moore, David (2003) ‘Zimbabwe’s Triple Crisis: Primitive Accumulation, Nation-State Formation and Democratisation in the Age of Neo-liberalism’, African Studies Quarterly, Volume 7, Issues 2&3; on the question of the ‘instability’ Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J (2007) Do ‘Zimbabweans’ Exist?: Trajectories of Nationalism, National Identity Formation and Crisis in a Post-Colonial State, Peter Lang: London and also Raftopoulos, Brian and Mlambo, Alois (eds.) (2009) Becoming Zimbabwe: A History from the Pre-Colonial to 2008, Weaver Press: Harare.
- 24.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. (2009), Africa for Africans or Africa for “Natives” Only? “New Nationalism” and Nativism in Zimbabwe and South Africa, in: Africa Spectrum, 44, 1, 61–78 and also Ndlovu-Gastheni, Sabelo J (2009) The Ndebele Nation: Memory, Hegemony and Historiography, UNISA: South Africa.
- 25.
Contestations over citizenship—Chimedza, Tinashe (2008) ‘Bulldozers Always Come: ‘Maggots’, Citizens and Governance in Contemporary Zimbabwe’ in Vambe, Maurice (2008) (ed) The Hidden Dimension of Operation Murambatsvina, Weaver Press; Hammar, Amanda., Raftopoulos, Brian and Jensen, Stig (2003) Zimbabwe’s Unfinished: Rethinking Land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis, Weaver Press; Dashwood, Hevina (1999) Zimbabwe: The Political Economy of Transformation: Toronto; also see Phimster, Ian (1994) Wangi Colia: Coal, Capital and Labour in Colonial Zimbabwe: Baobab Books; Rutherford, Blair (2001) Working on Margins: Black Farmers, White Farmers in Postcolonial Zimbabwe, Weaver Press.
- 26.
Ferguson and Mcnally (2015).
- 27.
AMP, (1997) Riding the Tiger: Lesotho Miners and Attitudes towards Permanent Residence in South Africa, May 1997.
- 28.
SAMP (1998), ‘Sons of Mozambique: Mozambican Miners and Post-Apartheid South Africa’, July.
- 29.
Matsinhe, David M, (2014) Apartheid Vertigo: Unpacking Migration Discourses in South Africa, Ashgate.
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Khalema, N.E., Magidimisha, H.H., Chipungu, L., Chirimambowa, T.C., Chimedza, T.L. (2018). Crisis, Identity and (Be)longing: A Thematic Introduction of the Vestiges of Migration in Post-independent Southern Africa. In: Magidimisha, H., Khalema, N., Chipungu, L., Chirimambowa, T., Chimedza, T. (eds) Crisis, Identity and Migration in Post-Colonial Southern Africa. Advances in African Economic, Social and Political Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59235-0_1
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