Subjectivities of Survival: Conceptualising Just Responses to Displacement, Cross-Border Migration and Structural Violence in South Africa

Abstract

This article considers the implications for social work of displacement, migration and structural violence in urban South Africa. To this end, I explore the life stories of five cross-border migrants. I find that all five form part of South Africa's larger pool of surplus populations but face additional, citizenship-based forms of exclusion. Even though generally self-reliant, all of them experienced cumulative agency constraints and felt vulnerable. Against this background, I propose that current, refugee-centred services should be expanded and that interventions should be carefully balanced to attend to structural issues, inter-group conflict and the range of vulnerabilities articulated by cross-border migrants. Ms SUBJECTIVITIES OF SURVIVAL: CONCEPTUALISING JUST RESPONSES TO DISPLACEMENT, CROSS-BORDER MIGRATION AND STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE IN SOUTH AFRICA Dorothee Hölscher INTRODUCTIONThe concept of justice is so complex that, according to Sen (2009), we are required to deduce many of its qualities and requirements from our awareness of what transpires in its absence: we know justice when it is lacking. Sen (1999Sen ( , 2009 maintains that for justice to prevail, certain conditions need to be present. For example, people require the "freedom to choose" (Sen, 2009:19) between different kinds of valuable beings and doings; they "have to be seen… as actively involved -given the opportunity -in shaping their own destiny" (Sen, 1999:53). In other words, agency is a constitutive component of justice. Yet while justice remains a generally accepted reference point in social work discourses and debates (Hölscher, 2012), questions of agency are considered less often. The purpose of this article is to apply the concept of agency in the analysis of cross-border migration to South Africa and to explore its implications for social work interventions and services in this field of practice.Since the end of apartheid South Africa has attracted cross-border migration at an unprecedented scale (Crush, 2011). For example, from 2006 to 2011 the country received the world's highest annual number of individual asylum applications (UNHCR, 2013).While it has been difficult to establish the total number of cross-border migrants living in South Africa (Crush, 2011), the number of registered asylum seekers and recognised refugees is currently in excess of 300 000 persons (UNHCR, 2015). The majority of migrants settle in South Africa's fast-growing urban centres (Landau, Segatti & Misago, 2011;UNHCR, 2015). These are dynamic environments characterised by inter alia escalating levels of poverty and degradation, and local authorities trying to meet their governance mandates within considerable budgetary constraints (Hart, 2013;Simone, 2004). A growing body of literature attends to issues of poverty and survival among South Africa's urban poor at large (see, for example, Simone 2004Simone , 2010Simone , 2011). Yet much is still to be understood about the specific challenges and survival strategies among cross-border migrants and how these migh...

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