SUBJECTIVITIES OF SURVIVAL: CONCEPTUALISING JUST RESPONSES TO DISPLACEMENT, CROSS-BORDER MIGRATION AND STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE IN SOUTH AFRICA

• Main Author: Holscher, Dorothee
• Format: Article
• Language: Afrikaans
• Published: Stellenbosch University 2016-07-01
• Series: Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk
• Subjects: Agency; Justice; Life Story Research; Relative Surplus Populations; Social Policy and Services
• Online Access: http://socialwork.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/479

This article considers the implications for social work of displacement, migration and structural violence in urban South Africa. To this end, I explore the life stories of five cross-border migrants. I find that all five form part of South Africa’s larger pool of surplus populations but face additional, citizenship-based forms of exclusion. Even though generally self-reliant, all of them experienced cumulative agency constraints and felt vulnerable. Against this background, I propose that current, refugee-centred services should be expanded and that interventions should be carefully balanced to attend to structural issues, inter-group conflict and the range of vulnerabilities articulated by cross-border migrants.