‘Passing’ as Black South African: identity concealment tactics of Eritrean refugees in the face of xenophobia

Abstract

ABSTRACT More recently there is a growing research on passing tactics employed by Southern African migrants in the context of xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa; however, little is known about what tactics non-Southern African migrants from other African countries utilize to make themselves invisible in the face of anti-foreigner attitudes in post-apartheid South Africa. I address this research void by reporting on the ways in which three Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers in Durban, South Africa attempted to pass as Black South Africans during xenophobic violence of 2015. The three Eritreans attempted to enact three different tactics of passing to avoid being marked as a ‘foreigner’: (1) racial passing by modifying the body; (2) linguistic passing by speaking the local language; and (3) remaining silent to avoid detection. The results of this study form part of a larger project that examined racial/ethnic self-identification patterns of Eritreans in South Africa. Drawing on participants’ accounts, I argue that non-Southern African foreigners in South Africa are not simply passive victims of xenophobic violence but creative and agential social actors who perform a multiplicity of tactics to avoid being victims of xenophobia during their random social encounters with South African citizens.