Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the concrete actions and procedures that African migrants have engaged in, in an attempt to access education given structural and institutional impediments which disrupt such access.

Paper long abstract:

In the Southern African region, South Africa continues to be a destination of choice for migrants from the SADC and beyond. The increasing numbers of migrants and especially those from African countries has generated debate and xenophobia alike. This has been characterised by discourses which advocate for stricter immigration regimes precisely because migrants and particularly those from African countries are assumed and/or perceived to fiercely compete with South African citizens, for jobs and resources as well as facilities such as health and education, among others. This is the context of this paper, which explores the concrete procedures which have been employed by African migrants in South Africa so as to access education. The paper argues that, the structural and institutional impediments faced by African migrants in accessing education has forced them to employ methods ranging from the illegal to those which can be characterised as dynamic agentive, such as use of fraudulent documents. This brings to the fore the dialectics between social integration at the level of education between member states of SADC, for example and the securitisation of migration. It is argued, that, this appears to assault the ideal of regional integration as immortalised in the Declaration and Treaty of SADC (1992).