Migration and Xenophobia in Southern Africa

Scholarship on xenophobia in Africa in general and Southern Africa primarily attributes its endurance to a combination of factors. These include conflict and national, regional, and global economic inequalities that produce xenophobic dispositions deriving from the fear of criminal threats, diseases, and competition for limited resources, public services, and job opportunities. Xenophobia in Southern Africa has expressed itself in both violent and non-violent ways ranging from direct violence to displacement, verbal abuse, and various forms of discrimination and injustice. Solutions to the problem of xenophobia have been mainly elusive partly because of the failure and/or reluctance to address its root causes. Some African leaders have suggested increased militarization of borders to stop illegal immigration. Others have proposed the need to stop the migration of citizens from one African country to another, especially movement to those countries that intermittently experience xenophobic violence. This chapter establishes the link between xenophobia and social exclusion in both sending and receiving countries and suggests the adoption of social inclusion policies to deal with the challenge. Using social inclusion as its conceptual framework and the case of Southern Africa, the study elucidates how the political and socio-economic problems in African countries have contributed to anti-immigrant sentiments

Archaeology · Geography · Immigration · Xenophobia · African history and culture studies

• Affirmation and Defamation

  Open Access•K S Tarisayi, Sadhana Manik•Journal of International…•2021

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