Moyo, I. & J. Laine (2021). Precarity of borders and migration regimes in the Southern African region. In: I. Moyo, J. Laine & C. C. Nshimbi, (eds). Intra-Africa Migrations: Reimaging Borders and Migration Management. Routledge, London. Precarity of borders and migration regimes in the Southern African region Inocent Moyo and Jussi P. Laine Introduction The Southern African region is part of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), but specifically refers to those countries which are located on the southernmost part of the SADC. These countries generally include Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. A number of states in the Southern African region continue to treat migration primarily as a security issue. This defi es the historical fact of well- established patterns of migration which can be traced to well before the colonial period (Crush et al, 2005). This effectively means that the securitisation of both borders and migration disrupts long-term historical migration patterns and, in this respect, presents a short- term thinking/ fi x which militates against development. The securitisation of migration and related border(ing) policies aim at filtering and sorting the people crossing them, granting admission selectively to those migrants considered as welcome and wanted (Laine, 2018a). For example, in South Africa, skilled migrants are preferred at the expense of those without the skills (see e.g., Peberdy, 2009). Likewise, Botswana also prefers a strong anti- immigration approach (see e.g. Campell and Oucho, 2003; Moyo, 2017a, b). To this can be added the case of Namibia. Based on these developments, we argue that the preference of skilled migrants over those who are not (a generally selective migration approach) is an essential element or characteristic and/ or example of constructing individual countries as gated communities based on social ordering and classification of people. The social ordering effect of gated communities is that those who are denied admission suffer the precarity of both the physical and symbolic borders. Building on these notions, this chapter argues that the construction of countries as gated communities in the Southern African region militates against the ideal of free human mobility and by extension does not augur well for the regional integration drive and Pan- African identity which is the ultimate target as immortalised in the Declaration and Treaty of SADC (1992). For these reasons, the chapter amplifies the need for a regional migration management approach, which would engender free human mobility in the SADC, unlike the current nationalistic and inward- looking approaches which entrench gated communities. This chapter advocates the understating of mobility, as an ability and a human right and not privilege, which has fallen victim to the current political retrenchment and nationalist agendas. Mobility is an important factor in the stigmatisation of specific people and places (Stjernborg, Tesfahuney, and Wretstrand, 2015), yet also mobility in itself has become considered increasingly as something threatening. As mobility, such as migration, is in essence about transcending borders, the role of border has become commonly emphasised and their stricter enforcement offered as a solution to the perceived, external, threat. Borders, according to this reading, serve to protect national societies from external “ills” while maintaining conditions for their economic sustainability and resilience. In tandem with the securitising discourses that stigmatise mobility and migration, political pressure has increased for more formidable and militarised borders in order to defend national cultures, even at the risk of reducing cross- border mobility for everyday citizens and curtailing democratic rights (Jones, 2016). Borders do, however, also reflect ethical questions of considerable importance (Laine, 2018b), which need to be also taken into account and balanced against the mere control functions of borders. The insights on which this chapter is built are based on a thorough review of authentic secondary sources of migration in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. This was complemented by a qualitative in- depth interview study of migrants from SADC countries. These interviews were conducted between December 2014 and March 2015 on the borders between South Africa and Zimbabwe at Beitbridge and between March and August 2018 at the Botswana and Zimbabwe border at Ramokgwebana. After this introduction is an analysis of the background of the chapter. The next section discusses the theoretical framework for this chapter by invoking the notion of gated communities so as to communicate the securitisation and selectivity of migration in many African and Southern African countries. Although the concept of the securitisation of migration is
Precarity of borders and migration regimes in the Southern African region
Aug 04, 2023
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