Refugee Reception Offices and Contested Rights in South African Cities

• In Event: 1154 - Refugees: Comparative Perspectives from Above and Below

Abstract

Courts and litigation have played a significant role in the protection of asylum seekers and refugees. In South Africa alone, there were 1,900 open cases related to asylum seeker management in 2016/2017 (Department of Home Affairs 2017). Within the court system, the state may be conceptualized as having two distinct but related borders: its territorial border and a social border around membership and rights (Walzer 1983; Bosniak 1991). However, the case of asylum seekers, understood here as persons who apply for formal refugee status after they have already entered a given country, complicates this distinction, as their presence in the country is intertwined with their claim to membership through asylum. While there has been significant debate around the extent to which states have jurisdiction to control their borders and restrict membership and rights of foreign nationals in face of international law (Soysal 1994; Joppke ed. 1998), there has been less attention to litigation over states’ rights to control the location and mobility of asylum seekers once they are already in the country of asylum. Furthermore, analytical perspectives that focus on litigation related to international law or national policies may overlook the degree of within-country variation and contention depending on the location and operation of particular bureaucratic offices (Marrow 2009). Finally, there has been less attention to litigation of the location and administration of asylum seeker and refugee reception offices in major cities, as opposed to camps or offshore sites, particularly in the Global South. Therefore, through an analysis of legal cases, stakeholder interviews and field observations of Refugee Reception Offices (RROs) in South African cities, I argue that urban actors, institutions, and legislation, such as municipal zoning and public nuisance laws, can potentially play a key role in the development of refugee and asylum seeker law and policies.

Author

• Jay Johnson, University of California-Los Angeles