SIHMA | Scalabrini Institute For Human Mobility In Africa
02
AUG

Tracing the border in the city: Exploring migration and the urban borders of Cape Town

The Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa (SIHMA) and the Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town (SCCT) are hosting Corey Johnson, a doctoral Candidate at the University of Cape Town during 2022, as he conducts his doctoral research on migration and urban borders within the city of Cape Town. His research builds on recent scholarship that has sought to push beyond the notion of borders as clear lines of demarcation and separation, statically fixed to the territorial edges of nation states, and instead conceptualises borders as mobile, dynamic social institutions complete with a diverse set of actors and practices that produce differentiated forms of passage and access to state territory and rights. Contrary to the paeans of the 1990s that the processes of globalisation would produce a borderless world, the intervening years have seen borders proliferate, extending both deep into the interior of state territory as well as beyond. Cities have since become the preeminent sites of border enforcement practices and struggles, making the interrogation of borders and border-making an increasingly important aspect of urban studies. While borders ‘may be dispersed a little everywhere’, the border is not ‘everywhere for everyone’ and a key thread within critical border studies scholarship has been to chart how borders produce differentiated forms of legal status, inclusion, temporalities and governance practices in different contexts. Corey’s research aims to illuminate the borderscapes of Cape Town from a southern vantage point, analysing how the South African border regime border maps across the urban, and how migrants navigate and experience the border. 

Corey previously worked as the Manager of the Advocacy Programme at the SCCT and has collaborated with SIHMA through contributing to research reports, writing articles for the AHMR, and giving presentations at public events. As the Manager of the Advocacy Programme at the SCCT, he anchored the paralegal advice and information desk providing assistance to migrants and refugees. He worked on legislative and policy reform as well as strategic litigation cases (including cases such as the closure of the Cape Town Refugee Reception Office, establishing lawful family re-unification procedures within the asylum system, and securing durable immigration statuses for former Angolan refugees). He also worked on a number of awareness-raising initiatives over the years involving research, media pieces and public events. His experience with trying to assist individuals navigate the South African migration framework and the consequences of this led him to become interested in how regulatory mechanisms for migration impact the city, and his pursuit of a PhD. While conducting his doctoral research this year, he is also supporting the Advocacy Programme with submissions, strategic litigation and other advocacy initiatives.

 

Broadly speaking, the objectives of the research are to map and identify the South African border regime – its actors, practices, spatiality’s and temporalities as well its gaps, ambiguities, and informalities – across the urban space of Cape Town. In doing so, the research is cognisant of the fact that the governance of migration, while formally enacted by the nation state, often lands differently on the ground, interpreted and implemented informally at the geopolitical margins of the state. Secondly, the research aims to better understand the everyday practices migrants develop and utilise to navigate the ruptures and enclosures of the border throughout the city, paying close attention to both how the fluctuations and instability of the urban border regime impact migrants’ infrastructures of liveability as well as how it produces new legal geographies across the urban fabric of Cape Town.

The research relies on the concept of the borderscape, a conceptual tool used to study the border as mobile, perspectival and relational. The concept allows for the border to be viewed as a dimension of urban territory as well as a complex set of relationships between space, power and lived experience. Borderscapes are places of interaction that are shaped and reshaped by flows and connections within the circulations of migration, state political projects and the forces of globalisation. Critically, the borderscape concept includes individual migrants as actors not only navigating through these spaces, but also actively producing the borderscape.

Methodologically, the research is anchored in ethnography including in-depth formal and informal interviews, participant observation, and counter-mapping. As a technique, ethnography’s level of detail is well-suited for the project and can function as both a window into the specifics of the local – its different moments, places, people, and encounters – as well as the subjective experiences of differently situated individuals. The project will not be a conventional ethnography per se focused on a specific neighbourhood, nationality or community, but instead focus on legal status and how this impacts urban space in Cape Town. This ethnographic approach will be complemented by textual analysis of policy and legislation, the discursive construction of migrant illegalisation in the public sphere (at both the local and national scale) and on the border practices of the actors that implement the legal and policy framework. Importantly, the research aims to write from a ‘southern’ vantage point and add to the growing body of research and writing on migration and cities within southern urbanism.

 

The collaboration with SIHMA and the SCCT includes arranging interviews and focus groups with differently situated migrants in terms of legal status. This aspect of the project is broken down into two phases, with an initial round of focus groups and interviews held in May, and a second round scheduled for later in the year as a means to follow-up with informants. These focus groups are intended to discuss how migrants encounter state and non-state efforts to regulate migration and the contours of these experiences, both the mundane and exceptional. The project aims to provide an in-depth and textured view of migration and borders of Cape Town and the emergent migrant geographies and temporalities in the city. Through analysing the various dimensions of legality and differential inclusion, it is hoped that the project can shed light on the opaque practices, blurry boundaries and grey areas of the urban governance of migration and provide insights into the nature of migration and the city.

 

Corey Johnson

PhD Student, Univeristy of Cape Town

Consultant, Advocacy and Paralegal Programme - SCCT

 

Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

 

 

INTEREST IN WRITING SOMETHING FOR SIHMA?

If you are interested in contributing to the SIHMA Blog on the Move please contact us at: https://www.sihma.org.za/contact or if you are interested writing an article to be reviewed and published in the African Human Mobility Review, please follow this link on making a submission: https://www.sihma.org.za/submit-an-article

 

Categories:
Tags:

Post Categories

Advocate's Migration Brief Advocates's Migration Brief African Union Articles Briefing Paper Call Children On The Move China Climate Change Disability Discussion Event Gender And Migration Human Rights Human Trafficking Internally Displaced Persons Journal Migrants Migration In Africa Migration Policies Narrative Of Migration News Pastoral Care Of Migrants And Refugees Press Review Refugees Report Research Research Project Research Projects Review Rights SCCT Series SIHMA Statelessness Test Training Course Category Trafficking In Persons Training Course Vulnerable Minors Webinar Wellbeing Youth Migration

Posts by Tags