Migration, Mobilization and Refugee Status: Zimbabweans in South Africa

• In Event: Migration in and from the Global South

Abstract

What rights should be afforded those who have left untenable circumstances (political, economic, environmental) but do not fit within the current internationally recognized criteria of a refugee? The case of Zimbabweans in South Africa illuminates the unintended consequences of when host countries afford special status to refugees alongside attempts to restrict so-called “economic” or “voluntary” migration. Since the 1990s, South Africa developed one of the most progressive asylum and refugee policies in the world. When neighboring Zimbabwe experienced increasing political instability and economic collapse, hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans crossed the border into South Africa to seek refuge. Yet South Africa classified Zimbabweans as economic migrants; rather than refugees, they were considered “illegal foreigners” subject to detention, deportation, and waves of xenophobic violence.

The purpose of this article is two-fold. First, to build on the growing literature on transnational party mobilization of citizens abroad by contributing a case-study of the transnational efforts of opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to mobilize Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa during the political and economic crisis in the early 2000s. To date, the emerging literature on transnational campaigning by political parties has primarily focused on parties in Latin America and Europe, with diaspora mobilization of contemporary African political parties comparatively understudied. The case reveals the challenges facing political parties to mobilize supporters in the context of South-South migration, in contrast with transnational party activities in areas of relative democratic and economic stability. Second, the case reveals that the difference between forced and voluntary migration is both increasingly difficult to delineate and has increasingly dire consequences for populations that do not fit precisely within state and international legal determinations of mass refugee movements.

Author

• Elizabeth Iams Wellman, Williams College