New blog: Beyond 'illegal foreigners': Why South Africa must rethink migration, legality and belonging

South Africa witnesses nationwide anti-immigration protests, demanding the deportation of undocumented foreign nationals. Framed as a campaign to defend jobs, the protests tap into growing anxieties around unemployment, crime and state failure. Yet beneath these grievances lies a dangerous political habit of turning migrants into convenient scapegoats, writes PhD candidate Tinashe Chimbidzikai in the ASCL Africanist Blog.

Read the blog.
 

Photo: 14 October 2019 - Foreign nationals staging a sit-in (6 days in by time of photograph) at the Cape Town United Nations Refugee offices to demand that their passage back to their home countries be paid for. The sit-in followed the September xenophobic riots in Johannesburg a month earlier. Credit: Discott, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.