A Kafkaesque state: deportation and detention in South Africa

‘We Deport Them but They Keep Coming Back’: The Normalcy of Deportation in the Daily Life of ‘Undocumented’ Zimbabwean Migrant Workers in Botswana

“…Another migrant told me: 'One policeman was willing to release me, but the other (senior) policeman insisted me to be deported' (mz5). Even when a bribe is successfully negotiated it does not ensure a complete exemption from deportation (see also Sutton and Vigneswaran 2011).…”

Enduring Uncertainty

“…There is a growing body of literature on immigrant detention. Although some have examined detention from the perspective of immigration officers (Hall 2012;Sutton and Vigneswaran 2011), most tend to focus on the experiences of detainees. In the UK, this body of research has mostly centred on the lived experience of detention by asylum seekers, and tends to limit the analysis to experiences of detention while foreign nationals are detained (BID 2009;LDSG 2009).…”

“…In fact, the literature on the state of exception, derived from the work of Agamben (2005), on which many studies of migrant illegality and deportability draw, leaves little space for resistance or contestation. In recent years numerous studies attempting to apply Agamben's biopolitics of states of exception to contemporary deportation systems have revealed both that authority is not necessarily overly centralised (Landau 2005;Sutton and Vigneswaran 2011) and that there is in fact scope for resistance and contestation (Abu-Laban and Nath 2007;Ellermann 2009Ellermann , 2010McGregor 2011;Nyers 2008;Rygiel 2011). Even in confined spaces such as Immigration Removal Centres there is room for political action.…”

“…In their study of deportability in South Africa, Sutton and Vigneswaran (2011) divide migrants' reactions to the deportation system between compliance and resistance, and argue that the choice is directly related to the way migrants conceptualise their migration stories. Those who comply tend to view their migration story as beginning and ending with their entry and removal from South Africa.…”

Waiting in liminal space: Migrants' queuing for Home Affairs in South Africa

“…Waiting might be considered a crucial aspect of liminality, in an almost Kafkaesque atmosphere waiting for things to happen (Sutton & Vigneswaran 2011). Waiting in liminal or transitional space is waiting for things to come; it is an 'interstructural period' (ibid).…”