Paper short abstract:

I focus on the establishment of group boundaries, identities, and belonging taking place among migrants in South Africa as a response to or alongside the formation of a new national(-ist) boundary among (most) South Africans amid the recurrent xenophobic violence.

Paper long abstract:

Recurrent xenophobia in South Africa, whether in its 'heightened form', as distinguished by Crush and Ramachandran, or in more commonplace practices, as migrant narratives have increasingly exposed, has led a scholar like Achille Mbembe to ask himself 'Why has this country historically represented a "circle of death" for anything and anybody "African"?' With this, he reflects upon how a large part of the South African population is socialised, or nationalised, in every time new ways while mostly, yet not exclusively, African 'others' continue to be antagonised, potentially victimised, within the same project, and territory. As shown in one of Horowitz's studies, to understand the complexities entangled in large-scale episodes of ascriptive violence such as those taking place in ethnic riots, it is important to observe how group boundaries are established in the first place. According to Barth, whether subjectively or as a consequence of the interaction between groups, ethnic boundaries emerge to give way to particular 'ethnic identities', and belonging. In this article, I focus on the establishment of group boundaries, identities, and belonging taking place among migrants in South Africa as a response to or alongside the formation of a new national(-ist) boundary among (most) South Africans. I engage with the published narratives based on the life stories of individual migrants in South Africa and interview their authors to discuss their perspectives around boundary formation among non-South Africans, and their aspirations in terms of the establishment of said boundaries, whether or not subjectively (or strategically) constructed.