Immigration Enforcement & the State in Africa

Control remains the central objective of global migration governance, however, the literature has been mostly focused on movements from developing to developed countries. We know comparatively little about the nature and transformation of migration controls in the Global South. This initiative seeks to understand how African states are redeploying resources and manpower to limit human mobility, and how these practices, in turn, are transforming the African state. We engage with Political Geographers’ discussions on the changing nature of state territory, International Relations debates on the evolution of the state system, and an African Studies literature on the origins and evolution of state bureaucracies. Thus far, the key projects within this initiative have included:

- Archival studies of the historical evolution of migration controls under apartheid;
- Media analyses of the representation of undocumented migrants in newspapers;
- Elite level interviews to examine the development of policy ideas in the post-Apartheid era;
- National surveys of the refugee reception and status determination processes
- In-depth ethnographic studies of immigration bureaucracies and contemporary police culture;
- A survey and qualitative study of detainees at the Lindela repatriation centre.

This initiative has been primarily focused on South Africa, but is currently developing comparative studies of migration controls in a number of developing contexts, across Southern Africa and in India.