Part 3 Summary of Findings, Conclusions and
2.3 Globalisation, Turbulent Migration in Southern Africa and Migration Governance in the Post-apartheid Period
2.3.1 Contemporary Forms of Displacement and Cross-border Migrants in Southern Africa
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2.3 Globalisation, Turbulent Migration in Southern Africa and
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warfare to civil strife and communal violence, these conflicts have tended to be characterised by mass displacement of civilian populations, both as a means and a consequence of aggression. By the mid-90s, the tragic result was that in some countries, the number of persons suddenly uprooted by violence was more than double those who might have been more gradually displaced through unemployment, poverty, environmental degradation, and other afflictions (Findley 2001). Notwithstanding the complexity and local specificity of causes, Sally Findley (2001:279) asserts that, ‘countries with dismal and deteriorating economic situations, rising unemployment, rampant inflation, and declining living standards are particularly at risk for political chaos, complex emergencies and forced migrations’.
Responding to the common distinction between forced-versus-voluntary, and economic- versus-violence-induced migration (see below), Findley (2001:279) goes on to describe the often intricate weaving of structural and interpersonal violence that gives rise to mobility:
Many forced migrants … have faced economic stress for long periods prior to their departure, so that actual flight can be seen as the culmination of an extended period of economic duress in the face of insurmountable conflict … In contrast, some voluntary migrants move precipitously in the face of a crop failure or localised crisis, their move having some of the compulsion elements of forced migration.
Caroline Kihato (2004:5-6), too, alludes to the complexity of forces in response to which people choose to migrate:
Households in Africa are increasingly turning to cross-border migration as a ... survival strategy. The decision to send a … family [member] to another country is often deliberated [jointly] ... Even among forced migrants, not all members of the household emigrate … Households will often choose the members who are most likely to find work and support their family back home ... Barring a war completely ravaging a particular community, a base is always retained in the country of origin. This way … households are able to spread their risk and optimise the resources available to them.
In spite of the apparent interweaving of causes that can push people to migrate across borders, the responses of most receiving countries are split between those that focus on economic factors and those that focus on ‘forced migration’. Regarding the former, an illuminating example is the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which encompasses all African countries from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania to the South. The organisation was formed in 1992 with a view to advancing economic integration of its 15 member states (Black, Crush and Peberdy 2006; Segatti 2011). To this end, the 1992 SADC Treaty was intended not just to facilitate the cross-border movement of
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capital and goods but also to ease restrictions on the ‘free movement’ among SADC’s citizens seeking economic opportunities across borders (SADC n.d.). Indeed two decades on, Aurelia Segatti (2011:24) contends that ‘the regional skills market is characterized by emigration’ of professionals from Botswana, Namibia and South Africa ‘toward countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’, who are then replaced with ‘skilled nationals from the rest of the continent’. Still, Segatti (2011:22-23) contends that the SADC’s ‘initial consensus about free movement as a goal of regional integration [has] seemed to vanish’
(Segatti 2011:22-23). In fact, there is a shared view that to date, SADC’s member states are at best neutral, but generally hostile to human mobility, especially with regard to poverty- induced forms of migration (Black, Crush and Peberdy 2006; Crush, Grant and Frayne 2007;
Segatti 2011).
This hostility is best understood in relation to the immediate postcolonial period when the governments of Africa’s newly independent states took on the task of forming nations out of territories that comprised a multitude of ethnic and linguistic groups (Reader 1998; Achebe 2012). Richard Black, Jonathan Crush and Sally Peberdy (2006:102) note that at the time, ‘the imperatives of new nation-building and Africanisation did not encourage the idea of immigration … Outsiders were generally viewed as a threat’. Decades later, many African countries have retained migration policies devised during the early years of independence (Black, Crush and Peberdy 2006). By 2014, only three SADC member states (Lesotho, Mozambique and the Seychelles) had ratified the United Nations Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (UN 2003), even though the Convention was adopted in 1990 and has been in force since 2003. It appears thus that the spirit of national exclusivity of the early years of independence has survived into a historical context that in fact prompts cross-border mobility (see Section 2.1).
Most Southern African countries are signatories to the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol (UNHCR 1996), and to the then Organisation of African Unity’s Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa (OAU 1969). The two conventions reflect the binary conception of forced-versus-voluntary migration. According to the UN 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol, individual persecution, or a well-founded fear of persecution on ethnic, religious or political grounds must be proven as a basis for the granting of asylum, which in turn affords refugees comprehensive protection
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and some entitlements to legal, social and economic integration. The OAU Convention of 1969 expands this definition to include refugees from war or civil war where individual persecution cannot be proven – often the case in African contexts – but affords refugees, once accepted, the same rights as those enshrined in the UN Convention. Still, Black, Crush and Peberdy (2006:103) point out that in the entire region, ‘support for refugees and asylum seekers is limited’ and express concern that ‘the overriding focus of most [national policies and] legal instruments is enforcement, control and exclusion’ (Black, Crush and Peberdy 2006:102), while the predominant practice is to accommodate refugees in UN-administered camps (Landau 2006; Makhema 2009).
In short, the causes of contemporary migration in Southern Africa are multiple and intertwined, yet responses of receiving countries can be divided into those that focus on what is presumed to be voluntary – i.e. economic – migration, and those that focus on what is understood to be forced migration – i.e. induced by violence. In both regards, responses at the level of treaty, legislation and policy formulation can be distinguished from those at the level of discourse and practice. These two levels are not necessarily in sync, at times even working at cross-purposes. In the ensuing dynamics, it appears that economic and ideological considerations are important factors in receiving countries’ governance of cross-border migration.