Interventions and poor black Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa
Research project
Contact person: Reason Benamauro,
PhD-student
This ethnographic study investigates the ways in which the state,
humanitarian organizations and rights groups operating under a
faith based ideology and human rights narrative in South Africa and
dealing with migrants classify, categorize and conceptualize poor
black Zimbabwean migrants.
The study, organized around identifying the social, political,
economic and historical context of the issues under investigation,
traces how these understandings and categorizations are constructed
and transformed over time.
The study further examines how these categories are negotiated,
challenged or appropriated by individuals and communities in their
everyday lives. Apart from seeking to understand the engagements
between organizations and migrants, the study also attempts to
decipher the life worlds of the migrants and to depict the various
ways individuals manage the dilemmas and struggles of their
everyday lives in search for recognition and livelihoods in a
post-apartheid society that is saturated with race and pervaded by
economic inequalities, crime and violence and hostile tendencies
towards black migrants.