Introduction

Abstract

It is the main contention of this book that there is a decisive and urgent need for migration research from a southern African perspective. The chapters in this book contend that South-to-South migration will dominate migration trends, leading to an increase in migration within the Global South and to the Global South. The predominant literature on the Global South adopts theoretical and methodological scholarship rooted in South-to-North migration. While there is an emerging body of knowledge in the sociology of migration within the Global South (Landau & Bakewell, 2018; Batisai, 2017; Rugunanan, 2016), here we assert that there is a noticeable absence of theorising migration from the Global South about the Global South. We build on Segatti’s (2011) assessment that the migration literature has ignored population mobility and international migrant workers in Africa and, in particular, southern Africa.

These are our stories: Children’s more-than-human encounters with migration in Global South and North contexts

“…In the Global North, the study of family migration is characterised by a ‘children-in-families’ approach that omits children’s experiences as distinct family members focussing on the ‘family’ experience as a whole (Moskal and Tyrell, 2016). Similarly, even while there is a recognition of the ways in which family and household can be very fluid in Southern Africa (Rugunanan and Xulu-Gama, 2022), by far the majority of the literature on migration in Southern Africa is focussed on the movement and experiences of adults. However, treating the family as a unit or focussing only on adults does not reveal the distinctive roles of family members, including children, and the ways these are conducted (Morgan, 2011).…”