Refugees In South Africa Research Articles

The role of institutional architecture in the reception of refugees in South Africa

ABSTRACT Post-Apartheid South Africa retains a national refugee reception system comprising of several key pieces of institutional architecture. Yet, since being established in the mid-1990s, the national refugee reception system, as overseen by the Department of Home Affairs (DHA), has been plagued by allegations of corruption, serious legal and procedural flaws in the application of the law, and the implementation of increasingly regressive national policies that breach international law, undermining the core principles of refugee protection. This article asks what impact the overarching management of refugee affairs being under the control of DHA has had on individual institutions. Ultimately, what emerges is a government department that from day one has been able to exert its influence over all aspects of refugee affairs, either through key pieces of institutional architecture, or by responding to perceived setbacks through multiple policy amendments. The result is a national system that creates barriers that prevent asylum-seekers and refugees from gaining access to the interior and leaves most forced migrants in the country struggling to access basic rights. Equally, the mounting importance of the judiciary and civil society as the only de jure and de facto custodians of refugee protection in the country becomes explicit.

Universal Refugee Social Protection Guidelines: A Discussion into the Challenges to Their Successful Adoption

AbstractThis paper discusses some of the impediments to the realization of refugee-specific conventions and the international bill of human rights content, i.e., the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the UDHR. The discrepancy highlights a broader failure in the diffusion of the global refugee regime and underscores the disparity between the intentions of global policy and its real-world impact. Challenges to global social policy diffusion (and the resultant implementation gaps in Africa) are examined through the use of secondary data on refugees in South Africa and the region. Also examined is the content of human rights conventions and their adoption. The challenges noted include (i) compulsory forms of power within the global governance system and constraints on the global refugee regime; (ii) protracted social conflict situations, funding gaps, geopolitical reordering and an ensuing lack of cohesion amongst stakeholders in the transference of global social policy and (iii) limitations in the content of refugee rights and a poor alignment of the said content at the national and local contexts.

Life as struggle: a narrative of coping strategies of elderly refugees in South Africa

Life as struggle: a narrative of coping strategies of elderly refugees in South Africa

“I still don’t know how someone gets pregnant”: determinants of poor reproductive health among young female refugees in South Africa

BackgroundStudies exploring the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) of refugee women have focused primarily on first generation refugees in humanitarian and crisis settings. There is a paucity of research exploring the reproductive health of girls and young women who are born to refugee parents in a host country or who have migrated with their parents at a very young age and who have since reached sexual maturity. We conducted a qualitative study which aimed to explore the reproductive health and rights’ needs and challenges amongst young refugee women in South Africa.MethodsThe study was carried out in the city of eThekwini (Durban) in South Africa in 2021 and 2022. A total of 35 semi-structured, in person interviews were conducted amongst young refugee women between the ages of 18 and 24 years living in the city centre.ResultsTwenty-five participants were 17 years or younger on arriving in South Africa, one of whom was born in South Africa. Eleven of these women had experienced one or more pregnancies while living in South Africa and all of these women had experienced at least one unintended pregnancy. Participants had poor reproductive health knowledge of the role of menstruation and how conception occurs. Economic, social, and legal insecurities intersected in complex ways as determinants of poor reproductive health outcomes. Despite availability, contraceptive use was poor and linked to lack of knowledge, myths and unwanted side effects. There were negative economic and social impacts for young refugee women experiencing early pregnancies irrespective of whether they were intended or not. Being unable to conceive or experiencing an unintended pregnancy negatively impacted sexual relationships which were entered primarily for material support. Desire for confidentiality shaped lack of access to legal termination of pregnancy in the public health sector.ConclusionParticipants experienced specific vulnerabilities resulting from their position as refugees despite length of stay in South Africa. It is important to better understand these specificities in the design of programmes and policies aimed at ensuring positive health outcomes for these young women. Peer education amongst refugee communities may be an important tool in the provision of culturally acceptable SRH education.

Impact of Covid-19 on Zimbabwean Immigrants and Refugees

COVID-19's outbreak in China at the end of 2019 and its expansion to South Africa have had a detrimental socioeconomic impact on Zimbabwean migrants and refugees in South Africa and immigrants and refugees are the hardest hit during the pandemic. The South African government's lockdown measures resulted in the shutdown of non-essential industries such as travel and tourism, construction, and e-hailing services, where most Zimbabwean migrants and refugees work as frontline workers. Some individuals are employed by shady businesses that can't afford to pay them during downtime. Others ran unregistered enterprises that were denied access to business relief packages due to technicalities. Furthermore, only a small percentage of the estimated 2 million Zimbabwean immigrants and refugees are documented to meet the access requirements for the aid packages. The government's ostensibly all-encompassing COVID-19 relief package requirements were as disparate as they were on paper. Negative nationalism, which sparked xenophobic attacks in 2008, 2015, and 2019, appears to underpin the government's foreign policy framework and attitude. According to the findings, the lockdown resulted in the loss of work, abject poverty, and broken marriages among Zimbabwean immigrants. To live, many turned to prostitution, drug dealing, and rampant opportunism.

Human Rights Violations and Mistrust among Refugees in South Africa: Implications for Public Health during the COVID Pandemic

Despite the open policy of integration, refugees in South Africa have been experiencing increasing exclusion and discrimination in socio-economic development and from social services. State-sanctioned discrimination contributes to mistrust among marginalized groups toward the government and its institutions. However, public trust towards healthcare authorities and government institutions is critical during pandemic outbreaks to ensure the population’s willingness to follow public health initiatives and protocols to contain the spread of a pandemic. Eleven key informants, including refugee community leaders and refugee-serving NGOs, were virtually interviewed about refugees’ access to healthcare in South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequences of inconsistent access and discrimination on their trust of public healthcare initiatives. Interviews were analyzed using critical thematic analysis. The results suggest that refugees’ access to public healthcare services were perceived as exclusionary and discriminatory. Furthermore, the growing mistrust in institutions and authorities, particularly the healthcare system, and misperceptions of COVID-19 compromised refugees’ trust and adherence to public health initiatives. This ultimately exacerbates the vulnerability of the refugee community, as well as the wellbeing of the overall population.

Who Helps Refugees in South Africa? An Examination of Cultural and Social Factors.

Pro-refugee philanthropy is beneficial for refugee integration and an important contributor to intergroup relations in a South African context. No study, however, has provided an in-depth quantitative analysis of what factors drive this type of behaviour. This article investigates what cultural, social and religious factors may predict participation in charitable behaviour towards refugees in South Africa. Three types of behaviours were examined: (i) material donations; (ii) volunteer activities; and (iii) information sharing. Using data from a 2019 Ipsos Migration Survey, the study found that intergroup threat was a robust predictor of charitable behaviour of all kinds. Friendship contact with a pro-refugee volunteer was also positively associated with philanthropic behaviour. Institutional trust and religious orientation were correlated with volunteer activities and information sharing but not donations. Study findings can be utilised to design interventions that increase public participation in actions that help refugees in an African context.

The Non-Integration of Refugees in South Africa as a Result of South African Domestic Rules

To discourage and avoid refugees from seeking protection on its territory, the government of South Africa is increasingly implementing restrictive refugee policies and practices. These policies and practices include interruption, prohibition measures, and restrictive interpretations of the refugee definition. This trend has manifested itself in several different ways, including an increase in the number of people held in detention facilities, a decrease in the number of benefits received from welfare programs, and severe restrictions placed on the possibilities of achieving financial independence, as well as restricted rights to reunite families. The denial of essential social, economic, political, and cultural rights, as well as other rights guaranteed by the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and other rights guaranteed under the OUA 1969 Convention, is one of the primary ways that the application of discouragement procedures has more recently been extended within the country to recognized refugees. This has primarily taken place as a result of a reduction in the standards of treatment that are provided to refugees. Refugees in South Africa frequently violate their fundamental legal protections because of a lack of available resources. Xenophobia and prejudice against foreigners, particularly towards refugees, have also increased in the country in recent years. These attitudes contribute to an aggressive local environment in which reduced treatment standards are tolerated or even seen as acceptable. In particular, this prejudice is directed toward refugees. Even though the State of South Africa has ratified the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol, the application of the convention varies greatly depending on the national, economic, social, and cultural conditions at any given time

Entrepreneurship as a strategy for refugees in South Africa

Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate how factors affecting refugee entrepreneurship influence the refugee entrepreneurship performance. Research Design & Methods: The positivism paradigm and quantitative descriptive research design were used to operationalise this study. Data were collected, using a self-completion structured questionnaire, from 355 refugees involved in entrepreneurial operations within the City of Tshwane, South Africa. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 25 was used to carry out descriptive and multiple linear regression analysis were used to determine the relationships between variables. Findings: Results indicated that factors affecting refugee entrepreneurship have a statistically significant influence on refugee entrepreneurial performance. Implications & Recommendations: To increase overall refugee entrepreneurial performance, strategic interventions involving five areas (societal factors, financial and business practices, legislation, infrastructure, and market opportunities) in this study may be initiated and utilized. It may be necessary to revise or create new policies to address the demands of refugee entrepreneurs. For example, in South Africa, proper regulations governing how refugee businesses should function is critical. Contribution & Value Added: Refugees’ entrepreneurship is a profound strategy that can be adapted to deal with refugee-related problems in receiving countries. Failure to adopt an appropriate strategy towards the influx of refugees has negative consequences towards the host country. Therefore, this study makes important contributions to theory and policy within the context of refugee entrepreneurship in receiving countries.

Asserting an Eritrean identity in the face of imposed racialisation: National identity claims of some Eritrean refugees in South Africa

ABSTRACT Current literature on Eritrean national identity has been dominated by debates on its function as a unifying and homogenising civic identity in a context of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-clan national context. Little is known, however, about how an Eritrean national identity is mobilised among Eritreans living in racially organised host societies. This paper addresses this lacuna by examining how Eritrean refugees living in a racially classified South African host society self-identified. The focus of analysis for this paper was how an Eritrean national identity was mobilised by some participants in the face of experiencing racial classification. Some individuals defined themselves as ‘Eritrean’ to resist their classification as ‘Black’ in everyday life. I argue that beyond functioning as a homogenising and unifying civic identity, an Eritrean national identity functioned as a bulwark against ascribed racial classification in a race-conscious South African host society,

The Covid-19 pandemic and socio-economic protection for refugees in South Africa

This paper examines the protection of the socio-economic rights and benefits in view of the relief measures taken to alleviate the economic distress caused by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Similar to South African counterparts, refugees and asylum seekers looked up to the South African government for their protection (known as ‘the surrogate national protection’) because they could not turn to their home governments from which they fled for national protection. It considers the divergence between the principles of refugee protection and citizenship, to underline that the South African government has the responsibility to protect refugees and asylum seekers. Drawing upon these principles, the paper analyses the Covid-19 relief packages from the perspectives of the spirits, purport, and objects of the Refugees Act 130 of 1998. In particular, it critically illustrates the conflicted and ambivalent attitudes of the South African government towards the implementation of surrogate national protection in real and actual situations.

COVID-19, migration and inclusive cities through e-governance: strategies to manage asylum seekers in Durban, South Africa

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the role of electronic governance (e-governance) in enabling asylum seekers’ access to public services in the city of Durban, South Africa. Because of COVID-19, the government scaled down its operations, limiting access to public services, including among migrants.Design/methodology/approachBecause of COVID-19-related restrictions, a systematic review was conducted of the relevant academic literature as well as the information portals of relevant government departments, municipalities and research reports on migration and refugees in South Africa. A total of 320 peer-reviewed research articles were identified. These were filtered and 68 relevant articles were selected.FindingsThe study found that asylum seekers have limited access to public services via information communication technology-enabled mechanisms. Whilst the city government has embraced e-governance, it is still in its nascent stages.Research limitations/implicationsThis study was limited to a desktop one because of COVID-19 restrictions and it focused exclusively on asylum seekers. Therefore, its findings can only be generalised to this category of people.Practical implicationsFuture studies on this subject should gather data from all categories of migrants to gain in-depth perspectives.Social implicationsAll spheres of governance in South Africa should recognise asylum seekers as a constituency that deserves access to public services. E-governance can facilitate easier access to these services, and policies need to be aligned with this reality.Originality/valueThis study examined the efficacy of e-governance in enabling access to government services by asylum seekers during COVID-19. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no other study on this subject was conducted during this period.

Is Voluntary Repatriation the Preferred Durable Solution? The View of Refugees in South Africa

Voluntary repatriation as the preferred durable solution for refugees has attracted much scholarly attention and the existing literature highlights the complexities of the process. This paper attempts to answer the question of when return can be considered as truly voluntary and preferred. To answer this question, the paper considers reasons offered by refugees themselves. The percentage of voluntary repatriation applications by refugees living in South Africa is low in relation to the number of refugees living in the country. However, reasons why refugees might choose to repatriate are still worthy of interrogation if we are to truly establish whether it is a preferred solution. Refugees’ answers illustrate that they are not always completely free to make choices. They may indicate consent, but consent does not necessarily indicate a preference. This paper incorporates a study which reveals that refugees choosing to repatriate from South Africa are indeed very small in number, despite the vigorous attempts of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at promoting voluntary repatriation. It further reveals that this can be partly attributed to the fact that in an urban setting such as South Africa with a rights-based framework, refugees are often able to better integrate into their host society without the direct assistance of the UNHCR as they would do in a camp-based setting. As such, assumptions that voluntary repatriation is a preferred durable solution for all refugees, need to be interrogated.

Policy exclusion or confusion? Perspectives on universal health coverage for migrants and refugees in South Africa.

Notwithstanding the promise of the inclusivity of universal health coverage (UHC), the integration of migrants and refugees into host countries’ health systems remains elusive and contested. In South Africa, there is insufficient scholarly attention on UHC, migrants and refugees, given the country’s strategic importance in Africa and the envisaged implementation of the National Health Insurance (NHI) system. In this paper, a social exclusion conceptual framework is used to explore whether South African legislation, health policies and perspectives or actions of health policy actors facilitate UHC for migrants and refugees or exacerbate their exclusion. We combined a review of legislation and policies since 1994, with semi-structured interviews with 18 key informants from government, academia, civil society organizations and a United Nations organization. We used thematic analysis to identify themes and sub-themes from the qualitative data.The South African Constitution and the National Health Act facilitate UHC, while the Immigration Act and the 2019 NHI Bill make the legal status of migrants the most significant determinant of healthcare access. This legislative disjuncture is exacerbated by variations in content, interpretation and/or implementation of policies at the provincial level. Resource constraints in the public health sector contribute to the perceived dysfunctionality of the public healthcare system, which affects the financial classification, quality of care and access for all public sector patients. However, migrants and refugees bear the brunt of the reported dysfunctionality, in addition to experiences of medical xenophobia. These issues need to be addressed to ensure that South Africa’s quest for UHC expressed through the NHI system is realized.

Assessing the Impacts of COVID-19 on Women Refugees in South Africa

The global COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns and restrictions have had uneven impacts on populations and have deepened many pre-existing inequalities along lines of race, ethnicity, class, gender. Refugees have been shown to be particularly negatively impacted in many countries, with existing structures of violence and insecurity worsened by the immediate consequences of the pandemic through policy responses which largely ignore their needs whether by excluding them from targeted COVID-19 mitigation measures, or by imposing restrictions which directly impact on their well-being. Our research with refugee women in Durban, South Africa, illustrates the ways in which COVID-19 has exacerbated their insecurities and intensified structural violence which renders them vulnerable. More importantly, it seems that the impacts of COVID-19 are not just short term but will deepen the violence and insecurities experienced by these women in the longer term if these are not addressed by government and relevant NGOs and civil society organizations.

Problematic Insiderness in Migration Research: Refugee Researcher Researching Other Refugees

In the area of race, ethnicity, and immigration studies, there is little discussion on the insider/outsider positionality when the refugee researcher and the researched refugees commonly experience ascribed racialization by the host society. I address this lacuna by reflecting on how insider/outsider positionalities played out in all phases of the research process during a research study that explored the racialization experiences of fellow Eritrean refugees in South Africa. Although my ethnicity, nationality, common experiences with racialization, and being known to some of my study participants positioned me as an insider, to others who had never been interviewed by a researcher in the past and who did not know me personally, I was viewed as an outsider. Asymmetric power relation was also a factor in shaping the research process and the knowledge produced. Reflecting on my problematic insiderness, I argue that within the field of refugee/migration studies, commonalities in ethnicity or nationality do not automatically make a co-ethnic/co-national researcher an insider. Insider or outsider positionality emerges and is shaped during actual encounters. Insiderness is also both beneficial and problematic throughout the research process from conceptualization of the study to interpretation of data.

A Comparative Analysis of the Application of the 1951 Refugee Convention to Victims of Sexual Violence in South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda

This article seeks to ascertain whether refugees who are victims of sexual violence in contracting states enjoy access to courts per Article 16 of the United Nations (UN) Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 Refugee Convention). It does so by comparing the situation of urban refugees in South Africa with that of refugees in camps in Tanzania and settlements in Uganda, beginning with a description of what "accessing courts" entails in the respective domestic criminal justice systems and of what mechanisms are in place for addressing sexual offences. It further uses the qualitative analysis of documented prosecuted cases of sexual violence in South African, Tanzanian and Ugandan courts between 2013-2017, 2009-2016 and 2013-2017 respectively to establish if these countries prosecute cases of sexual violence suffered by their citizens and whether claims of such violations affecting refugees also enjoy the same treatment. The enquiry found that of 328 documented prosecuted cases of sexual offences in South Africa, victims who were citizens were a majority in number. In Tanzania there appeared to be few prosecuted cases of sexual violence against refugees, but given that limited documentation is available, it is difficult to assess the actual figures. In Uganda the 187 recorded prosecuted cases of sexual offences in the years of investigation all related to citizens, despite the introduction of a mobile court to refugee settlements. Overall, this paper recommends that the countries under review adopt measures to ensure the prompt prosecution of cases of sexual violence against refugees and thereby enable them to access courts and testify against their assailants.

‘My race is Habesha’: Eritrean refugees re-defining race as pan-ethnic identity in post-apartheid South Africa

Scholars studying race and racial classification in post-apartheid South Africa have paid little attention to how African refugees navigate the South African racial classification scheme and how they self-identity in the face of their everyday encounters with imposed racial classification in South Africa. This paper addresses this research gap by exploring how first-generation Eritrean refugees self-identify in the context of an imposed South African racial classification system. The result reported here forms part of a broader research study that explored how Eritrean refugees in South Africa self-defined in the face of racialization. The broader study identified various themes but this paper only reports on those who defined their race as Habesha in the face of their experiences with racial classification. I argue that by defining their race as Habesha, participants re-defined race as a pan-ethnic identity dissociating racial identity from physical appearance and skin colour. Some refugees who never self-identified in terms of phenotype-based racial categories are nuancing traditional definitions of racial identity in post-apartheid South Africa.

Challenges to Refugees’ Socioeconomic Inclusion: A Lens Through the Experiences of Congolese Refugees in South Africa

In antithesis to the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development (socioeconomic inclusion for all) and a relatively progressive refugee policy framework (Refugee Act 130 of 1998), refugees in South Africa continue to face targeted exclusion and reduced living potentials. Impediments to refugee groups ability to ‘thrive and not just survive’ (as called for in the 2018 Global Compact on Refugees), are examined in this paper through a synopsis of the conditions surrounding their access to legal documents (a conduit to socioeconomic rights), their equitable participation/inclusion within the formal labour markets, financial sectors etc. In examining these issues, a case-study-based interpretive research design technique with eight FGD participants and two life history participants (drawn from Congolese refugees’ residing in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) was done. Several conceptual frameworks as well as a single principal theory (Murphy’s theory of monopolization) were utilized so as to fully examine forced migrant groups socioeconomic participation/inclusion in South Africa. This articles findings revealed that primary cultural, as well as structural agentive processes of obstruction significantly inhibit refugee groups full socioeconomic participating in the life of their host communities. The said obstructions included but were not confined to: adverse forms of incorporation, opportunity hoarding, as well as the normative unobtainability of social, cultural, and symbolic forms of capital.

A case study of government and civil societies’ collaboration and challenges in securing the rights of Congolese refugees living in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Several South African focused studies have identified the numerous challenges faced by refugees in securing their legal rights to employment, education, health care, etc. There is a need therefore to investigate the extent to which such challenges are conterminous with bureaucratic institutions (such as government departments) limitations in fully implementing the refugee policy. In cognisance of the many shortcomings associated with state-assisted integration models, we examined how bureaucratic efficiency (in the provisioning of refugee rights) can be achieved, i.e. the feasibility of instituting dependency partnerships between the state and civil society. A case study based interpretive research design technique was adopted, drawing from one focus group discussion with Congolese refugees and face-to-face in-depth interviews with three purposively selected NGO representatives. We used two theoretical perspectives, namely the theory of monopolisation and Weber’s theory on bureaucracy, to analyse how bureaucratic arrangements can negatively impact on the implementation of the refugee policy and consequently on the refugees’ quality of life and standard of living in their host country. We identified that primary cultural factors, amongst others, unruly practices, social closure, and institutional biases widen the chasm between the formulation of a progressive refugee policy and its efficient implementation. The setting up of human rights education interventions and dependency partnerships is recommended as a means of improving bureaucratic efficiency in the transfer or implementation of refugee social protections.
 Significance:
 
 The originality of this paper emanates from its conceptualisation of the state as a bureaucratic institution whose efficiency in implementing policies can be undermined by the existence of not only structural but also primary cultural factors. Refugees’ challenges are thus conceptualised as emanating from a failure to achieve bureaucratic efficiency.
 Multisectoral approaches (dependency partnerships) are suggested as an alternative to a purely vertical top-down model whereby a single bureaucratic institution (often prone to institutional biases and other challenges) is primarily responsible for implementing social protection policy.
 Apart from not providing a hypothesis-based analysis of refugee deprivations, other studies on refugees in South Africa and the region do not examine such deprivations from an institutional standpoint.