Navigating Black Identity: Self-Identification Strategies of Refugees in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACTScholars studying race in post-apartheid South Africa have largely focused on South African nationals. Little is known about the ways in which non-South African migrants and refugees navigate the South African racial classification system. In the context of continued immigration to South Africa, it is important to examine how refugees negotiate South African racial categories. This paper addresses this gap by interviewing Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers, who originate from an ethnicity-based classification system, to examine how they racially self-identify in everyday life as a result of their exposure to a race-conscious host society. Convenience and snowball sampling were used to select participants. The research sites were Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. A qualitative interpretative phenomenological analysis approach was employed to analyse data. The results presented here (patterns of Black self-identification) form only part of a larger project involving 46 Eritrean asylum seekers. Only 16 or one-third of the participants appropriated South African Black identity for a variety of reasons. Five themes were identified within Black self-identification: (1) “my phenotype makes me Black”; (2) “I feel Black when around Black South African friends”; (3) “living in Black neighbourhoods makes me feel black”; (4) “I am Black as I identify with the black experience”; and (5) “I check Black on forms to benefit from affirmative action”. Participants appropriated Black identity for various reasons depending on different circumstantial factors. For some participants, their physical appearance did not inform their Black self-identification, but other social factors. Through their various tactics and strategies of Black self-identification, participants redefined and re-casted what it means to be Black in post-apartheid South Africa. Their reasons for Black self-identification violate traditional understandings of Blackness in South Africa.