By Kudakwashe P Vanyoro
South Africa is currently experiencing mixed migration flows from different parts of the Southern African region. For example, Zimbabweans moving into South Africa encounter a double whammy of political displacement and labour migration (economically induced displacement). For this group of people, protections are far and few between. They are forced to choose between the asylum system, which, by design, is bureaucratically inefficient, and the labour migration system, which, among other things is driven by all sorts of xenophobic discourses.
They are met with an immigration and
refugee regime that casts a huge net to undermine all sorts of their potential
socio-economic and political agency. Just as it is hard to neatly reduce their mobility
to any singular policy protection (labour migration or refugee regime), since they
are not legally seen by the state as genuine asylum seekers but economic
refugees, the policies themselves are juggled to conflate their concerns and
needs and undermine their protection. One needs to only look at the Trafficking
in Persons Act, Amendment to the Refugees Act and White Paper on International
Migration. The three dance together as it were; which even makes it more
practically sensible for us to speak of a kind of mobility policy/governance regime.
In other words, their precarity is not experienced
within fixed ontological categories; but within multiple, intersecting policy
sytems. Indeed, there is a concerted political will by the state to see
anti-immigration policies pass, regardless of which policy/governance regime
one would like to neatly fit these migrants into.
What does this all mean for doing research
uptake and pursuing evidence-based policies through activism and advocacy? Here
I will highlight my suggestions that explicitly draw on the work I have published on the issues of ‘unpopular
causes’ in South Africa with the Migrating out of Poverty Research
Programme Consortium; and the notion of repoliticising migration narratives I published with colleagues in a Globalisations Special Issue.
Some have insisted on the perrenial need to
improve the capacity of policymakers to use evidence and bridge the
science-policy interface gap to improve relations between researchers and
policymakers, knowledge brokering and capacity building. Yet we know that the
reason for the marginalisation of evidence in South Africa is purely
philosophical; policymakers expediently choose what version of reality/truth
they are willing to accept. Consistent with the knowledge brokering model,
albeit in a counterintutitive manner, they form alliances and relationships
with their own tribe of researchers pursuing similar interests – a different
kind of rationality and political will - which is expedient for them in dealing
with ‘unpopular causes’ en masse.
For those of us concerned with influencing
policy through the right kinds of evidence, acknowledging this political
reality animates space to critically debate what approaches are best and
pragmatically suited to improve and sustain activism and research uptake on
these kinds of issues.
I would argue that, evidence-based activism
for migrants’ right in South Africa is hamstrung by the pathologisation of migration
as a whole in policymaking, which has lead to the dominance of ‘alternative
facts’ proliferated by actors who are tied together through ‘communities of
faith’ that hold steadfast to claims that despite a lack of evidence migration
is an extensive problem in South Africa. Therefore, there are limits to the
notion of bridging the science-policy gap through knowledge-brokering, at least
in the way it has been propounded this far. First, by insisting on notions of capacity
building, it works from an inherent assumption that (South) African
policymakers lack the capacity to make decisions that are ostensibly rational;
since, after all, ‘that is Africa’s perrenial problem’. Second, if anything,
the very existence of shoddy relations between science and policy is the reason
we find ourselves in this place, that is fraught with the use of problematic
bad data in policymaking. There is a sect of science and civil society that has
been coopted or ‘gone to bed’ with policymaking as it were.
So why should we still insist on bringing
these two worlds together, and in what ways?
With scarce, limited resources, I am less
concerned with bringing the worlds of policy and science together in our
Southern contexts because I am not convinced this is where we should be
channelling our efforts. I am not alone in this endeavour. Migrating out of
Poverty research done by the African Centre for Migration & Society in
South Africa found that there is little value in even targeting national
policies because the local level is where real, actionable change is more
likely to happen.
International
treaties and national policy frameworks may regulate migration, but it is ultimately a local government matter. After all, ‘At the end of the day, all migrants live in municipalities’. I also speak for
others like Kihato and Landau when I say the full protection of migrants and refugees in
South Africa demands a shift in both approach and language by activists and
researchers. Regarding language, elsewhere, we have argued for the need to
re-politicise the language and narratives of migration; to essentially
deneutralise and revitalise them. Likewise, in terms of approach, the full
protection of migrants and refugees requires activists and researchers to
promote rights indirectly to avoid political ire and political backlash through
creating ‘back-routes’ and capitalising on ‘windows of opportunity’. Through
this kind of stealth advocacy, perhaps activists and researchers ‘may avoid complex
and contentious public battles over rights’, instead focusing on building
solidarities with ‘local’ constituencies facing similar marginalization.
