Refugee Precarity and Collective Transformation: Ongoing Struggles for a Liberatory Praxis in Urban South Africa

Abstract

South Africa is a significant destination for forced migrants fleeing conflict and seeking better futures. Although South Africa is a signatory on international refugee conventions and protocols, in practice, asylum seekers face challenges in obtaining refugee status or residency permits, and in accessing employment, health care, and other forms social inclusion. Through these struggles, many forced migrants fend for themselves, network with kin and neighbours, or remain in transient in search of opportunities. Further, case studies in the literature show examples of forced migrant solidarity in urban South Africa, including by NGOs, law clinics, church organisations, refugee led associations, and academic spaces. Drawing together a review of these examples, alongside forced migrant experiences from our research, the article presents ongoing struggles for a liberatory praxis in urban South Africa. Overall, the article reviews how refugees in South Africa engage with, and face obstacles to forming, solidarities and collectivities with other organisations and alliances. This liberatory praxis is therefore an ongoing struggle, and we argue can be fostered through connecting and constructing shared and new histories. The article argues that while forced migrants can create possibilities of hope, through what Gramsci referred to as “renovating and making critical already existing activities” of their lived experiences, they are also continually stuck in waiting and exclusion.