Chapter 8 Conclusions and ways forward

Temporary versus permanent guest status

A core characteristic of reception in Southern Africa is the continual emphasis on refugees remaining fundamentally as guests on the territory. As a result, they rarely move past the level of ‘visitor’, with their stay in Zambia and South Africa retaining a precarious and conditional quality. This occurs in both the camp and urban settings. Differences emerge, however, in terms of understanding the temporary versus permanent character of refugees’ stay in these spaces. As examined further later, in the urban space, host states view refugees’ presence as temporary with access to that space understood as entirely provisional. In contrast, in the refugee camps in Zambia, while refugees still fundamentally remain as guests, there is nonetheless an understanding that their presence is likely to be long term.

Key to this observed difference is the way in which refugees are framed within the confines of the refugee camp. Large parts of the national government in Zambia continue to regard refugees as entirely separate from the political life of the state and as the responsibility of the international community. Thus, the main settlements in Zambia in many respects conform to contemporary work that has adopted Agamben’s (1998) ideas on ‘states of exception’. This framing of refugee camps is particularly pertinent today, with the settlements remaining the architecture through which political space, as well as geographical space, is regularly denied. This notion of reception in the refugee camp, while reflecting the bleak reality for many refugees in Southern Africa, is not of course the whole story. Daily access to local nearby communities allows some refugees in the settlements the mobility to engage in locally based livelihood activities and other refugees to utilise official travel pathways and take longer circular trips between the refugee camp and urban space. These officially sanctioned connections between the different reception sites and what they mean for conceptualising reception will be examined further below.

For the current discussion, the implications of these findings are two-fold. Firstly, each reception site inevitably offers a contrasting form of reception. Yet, regardless of which space is encountered, refugees in Zambia and South Africa remain as perpetual guests in the host state. Thus, while the form of reception may change over time (either through changes in policy or based on the agency of the individual refugee), the provisional form of residency offered on arrival endures long term. In line with previous research, the reception offered to refugees by states in Southern Africa, therefore, remains inherently qualified and conditional (Stronks, 2012). Indeed, this qualified form of reception may never truly end. Regardless of the specific modality of reception, refugees remain trapped as guests in someone else’s house, reluctantly invited in by the owner but unable to move past this initial ‘generous’ welcome: a welcome that comes with permanent conditions and restrictions.

Secondly, the refugee camp allows the state to experience and project a sense of control over a ‘non-rooted’ population and their movement. While refugees stay inside the camp, there is little reason for the Zambian state to engage with or form relationships with the inhabitants, as the needs of the population are essentially handed over to the international community.¹ A genuine two-way host/guest relationship only occurs once a refugee leaves the camp. Indeed, in terms of understanding reception inside the refugee camp from a state-level analysis, the notion of these spaces as reception sites inside the territory but not necessary of the territory remains pertinent. Refugees are permitted to stay as permanent guests in Zambia, as long as they remain passive and immobile in these humanitarian spaces, with limited access to the political space of the state. As a result, the Zambian Government has little political or economic motivation for attempting to remove or repatriate refugees from the settlements. As investigated next, this is in sharp contrast to the urban space, where the implications of access being entirely provisional mean that a much more delicate and negotiated guest/host relationship emerges. Thus, in many ways the manner in which states view the permanent guest status of refugees in refugee camps actually speaks as much to how they view refugees in urban spaces as it does to the camp space.

Negotiating reception: the interplay between levels of reception in urban spaces

The multi-scalar analysis adopted by the book sheds light on how the reception of refugees in urban spaces in Southern Africa takes place at different levels and how those levels interact. The top tier (national level) informs and influences lower tiers (local and sub-local) and vice-versa. In South Africa, the granting of freedom of movement by the state allows refugees access to other forms of welcome at lower levels, whether this is through municipalities or other local government structures (as seen in Johannesburg, with mixed results) or through sub-local networks of local residents and/or refugee communities. Yet equally, the policy of non-interference in urban areas by the national government and UNHCR also makes these additional forms of reception essential. In turn, increased tensions and xenophobic attitudes within local communities not only create barriers to accessing services and labour markets for refugees and forced migrants, but due to the negative democratic feedback loops that are created, often filter up to the local and national levels and exert influence on policy and law.

These layered processes of reception, which interact and inform each other, are potentially unique to the urban space due to the conceptualisations of the ‘urban refugee’ and refugee movement by the state and UNHCR. Reception in both countries is conditioned via an ‘invisible bargain’ which refugees are forced to accept with the national government in urban spaces. On the host side, both South Africa and Zambia complete their part of the bargain by firstly permitting refugees onto their territories (via their much celebrated ‘open door’ policies) and by formalising their stay, albeit in a temporary way. Secondly, in South Africa this initial welcome is followed up by the state granting freedom of movement and access to the economy, which allows (at least in theory) immediate access to the urban space.

Access to the city is more complex in Zambia, with refugees having to apply for either a gate pass or an urban residency permit. However, once refugees have permission to move to the urban space in both states, the construction of urban refugees by both states and UNHCR means that most key international obligations that would usually fall on the ‘host’, are relinquished. In return for this access to the urban space, most of the responsibilities stemming from this host/guest relationship now fall on the guest. Urban refugees can live among the voting and ‘rooted’ public as visitors, but with the caveat that they must be self-reliant coupled with an implicit understanding that they must remain ‘useful’ but essentially silent. As a result, access to the political space remains limited.

These findings have implications for how we conceive refugee reception in urban spaces in Southern Africa, and potentially the wider continent. Reception needs to be understood in terms of this tacit and delicate trade-off (or bargain) between the refugee and the host state. Interactions and relations that develop between refugees, state and local actors enable access to local structures and communities. However, this access is premised on an entirely temporary basis, by state entities. Equally, these delicate relationships are frequently prone to change due to processes of negotiation and renegotiation between key actors in these reception spaces. Indeed, underlying causal mechanisms embedded within state (and international actors’) behaviour continue to shape and alter these precarious relationships. For example, state- and community-level exclusion barriers often occur that enforce confinement to specific enclaves of the city or simply shrink access to the urban space entirely. Furthermore, while forms of belonging and ‘local citizenship’ are well documented at the local and sub-local level, these additional or alternative forms of reception appear to still be nested, to some extent, in larger geopolitical hierarchies at the national level. This is not to diminish the influential role such localised welcomes can have on the lives of refugees. Yet, due to their connectivity to higher up processes, they are unlikely to have the ability to completely reshape how refugees experience reception in urban spaces nor to offer a permanent solution to displacement.

Reception in urban spaces, therefore, remains fundamentally conditional, based on a fragile relationship between the host and temporary guest. Given that pathways to forms of permanent legal status remain remote, reception persists over the long term in these sites. Thus, the reception afforded to urban refugees in Southern Africa does not appear to substantially resolve the issue of displacement. As interrogated further below, these findings have consequences for how we understand the durable solution of local integration and the risks inherent in over-relying on concepts such as self-reliance and human agency when researching urban displacement.

The evolving symbiotic relationship between the refugee camp and the urban space

Research since the mid-2000s has shown how the refugee camp is a more dynamic and complex site of reception than was traditionally framed in the literature. Indeed, any analysis of contemporary refugee camps and related reception policies remains incomplete without also considering the areas surrounding the camps, and key urban spaces. This is in sharp contrast to previous long-standing depictions of the refugee camp and the urban space as being diametrically opposed and sealed off from one another. Recent reassessments of the refugee camp have predominantly focused on the reality on the ground by exploring how agency, mobility and technology connect this site to the rest of the host state. Thus, an objective of the book was to respond to the need for research investigating the intentions of the host state in relation to the recently documented forms of connectivity between the two reception sites.

The book submits that the purpose of refugee camps in Zambia is not to stop all movement, but that these designated sites of reception can in fact be understood as a method of regulating refugee movement into the interior and specifically into urban spaces. Thus, a multifaceted relationship emerges between the two reception sites – one that is symbiotic, with the activities in one site regularly affecting policy and practice in the other. In Zambia, the settlements are connected daily with local communities, the state and the wider world. COR is willing to allow this type of movement and interaction between refugees and citizens, albeit within certain limits. The result is that refugee movement in and around the urban space is regulated and controlled via the dominant camp reception policy. This has meant that the refugee camp creates the perception of stability required for some movement to be able to occur. Indeed, the camp space is in effect filtering the number of refugees in urban spaces and this helps to explain why the internal movement of refugees in Zambia is not currently being excessively securitised by the state.

As noted above, for states the movement of refugees and other ‘non-rooted’ persons is about moderation and management. Too much movement creates a destabilising effect, or at least the perception of instability and insecurity. For these reasons, states adopt various techniques to manage movement. Thus, states may see the refugee camp as a mechanism for managing movement. As a consequence, the findings suggest that we need to re-assess our understanding of why states in Southern Africa (and the wider continent) adopt camp-based reception policies. In contrast to previous literature that has supposed that states use refugee camps as the architecture to contain and remove all refugees from the interior, this book argues that camps need to be understood more as a way in which states can attempt to monitor and control the movement of refugees on their territory.

Every state attempts to manage the movement of ‘non-rooted’ persons on their territory. Indeed, freedom of movement is rarely envisaged without some recourse to limits or control. Yet with porous borders common across Southern Africa, coupled with an inability to adopt the external or internal border controls seen in the minority world,² states in the region have little choice but to resort to the camp space as a means of controlling unchecked movement into cities and towns. As a result, the refugee camp creates and maintains the order needed for some types of movement to be allowed in and around urban spaces. Crucially, the relationship between these different sites of reception remains delicately balanced: if numbers in the urban space increase rapidly or are perceived to reach an unsustainable level then a crackdown on urban reception can be expected, with refugees moved back to the camp space.

Confirming the ‘democracy-asylum’ nexus

In 2009, Milner proposed the idea of a ‘democracy-asylum’ nexus to explain why states in Africa, during the 1980s and 1990s, moved from free-settlement reception approaches to containment approaches (such as the use of refugee camps).⁷ In essence, he argued that the shift from authoritarian-style political settlements to more competitive ones led states on the continent to become more amenable to the growing anti-refugee and immigrant feelings within local voting populations – particularly in urban areas. In the fourteen years that have passed since Milner’s research, the ‘democracy-asylum’ nexus has received little to no attention within the fields of forced migration and refugee studies. By embracing this work, this project was able to investigate the continuing relevance of the nexus and in doing so hopefully reinvigorate research in this area.

The case studies illustrate how the nexus remains an overarching concern for democratic political settlements in Southern Africa today. Indeed, a key finding is that the ‘democracy-asylum’ nexus plays a more dominant role in state responses to refugee movement than contemporary literature might suggest. In recognising this, the book supports Milner’s conclusion that democracy is not always a good thing for refugees’ human rights. In addition, the book has extended contemporary understanding on this topic by applying the nexus to examining the relationships between democratic structures (at the national and local level) and the reception of refugees in refugee camps and urban spaces.

In both case studies, albeit to differing degrees, the empirical evidence shows how the nexus with democratic politics is influencing national reception policy and practice within urban spaces. In South Africa, as state institutions at both the national and municipality level become more competitive and arguably democratic, the ruling parties, in attempts to remain in power, become focused on short-term gains and responding to the attitudes of the voting public. The South African case study highlights how key material and ideational factors, including capacity and security concerns related to the increasing urbanisation of refugee populations, feed into these democratic pressures at the national and local levels. In the context of poor economic performance, high levels of unemployment and perceived scarcity of resources, there is a growing wariness of ‘outsiders moving in’ that is shared by the voting public, the City of Johannesburg and the national government. As a result, officials at all levels of the state are currently engaged in public campaigns that blame a range of social, economic and political ills on cross-border African migration. Indeed, as Betts (2009b) suggests, through this construction of refugees as the enemy/outsider, they become used as an opportunity for ruling political settlements to garner support from urban constituencies.

Additional refugee movement into the urban space can therefore create negative democratic feedback loops. By implementing key norms contained within the global refugee regime, including democratic rights, the state effectively runs the risk of being ‘punished’ if movement creates instability (real or perceived) and adversely affects the opinion of the voting public. The ‘democracy-asylum’ nexus is thus intrinsically linked with the increasing global preoccupation around the stability of the nation state (even at the expense of universal human rights). This has resulted in a paradoxical situation whereby increases in democratic structures have been a catalyst for the decline in rights and access to the urban space for ‘non-rooted’ persons such as refugees in Southern Africa.

The idea of a ‘democracy-asylum’ nexus is also valuable in terms of developing an analysis of the evolving relationship between the refugee camp and urban space. Interviews in Zambia revealed how during the 1990s and early 2000s, key departments of the national government repeatedly became concerned about the number of refugees in large cities and the destabilising effect this might have on the urban space and the voting public. Thus, on numerous occasions, there was a reaction whereby large numbers of refugees were forced back into the settlements. This example reinforces the negative link observed between democratic structures and refugee reception, as well as the continued relevance of the nexus in the maintenance of camp policies, as observed by Milner (2009). Yet these historical patterns in Zambia also reveal the complexities surrounding responses to refugee movement. The pushbacks by the state were not about stopping all refugee movement (or containing all refugees), but rather about managing refugees and their movement. As observed above, there remains a delicate relationship between refugees and state structures in urban spaces in Southern Africa; too much movement into these spaces will always create a reaction.

The final way in which the book has expanded existing work on the ‘democracy-asylum’ nexus is by investigating the converse position to the phenomena observed by Milner. Specifically, does an opposite shift in the form of government – that is, from a competitive/democratic political settlement to a more authoritarian-style political settlement – open up the possibility of improved reception conditions for refugees? In essence, the book examined the hypothesis that when a political settlement moves towards an authoritarian style of governance, the government feels it can implement long-term programmes based on self-interest and ideological commitments without being overly concerned about challenges from opposition parties or the risk of losing re-election.

During Edgar Lungu’s tenure as the President of Zambia between 2015 and 2021, Zambia witnessed ‘democratic backsliding’, whereby more and more power shifted to the Office of the President. These developments were troubling on numerous fronts, including the repression of opposition political parties, civil society and the press. Yet, due to the former president remaining ideologically committed to pan-Africanism, these shifts did offer an opportunity for better reception conditions for refugees. Indeed, this democratic backslide paradoxically created the political space for some positive moves towards refugee reception. In 2017, the state signed up to the Global Compact on Refugees, volunteering as one of the first countries to adopt the CRRF and committing to consider the long-term relaxation of the dominant settlement approach. In the same year, the state also opened the Mantapala settlement, with its focus on ‘whole of society’ and ‘whole of government’ approach. Time will tell whether these commitments will translate into long-term improvements in reception policies, particularly given some of the key concerns with the implementation of the Mantapala settlement, and the shift in power in 2021 to the new president, Hakainde Hichilema.

By advancing an analysis based on the ‘democracy-asylum’ nexus, these findings nevertheless suggest alternative approaches for UNHCR and other advocates of refugee rights in Southern Africa and further afield. Advocacy by international agencies in countries with political settlements like the one seen in Zambia between 2015 and 2021 is likely to be more successful if it is top-down, with less emphasis on pushing for international norms or the implementation of rights per se. Instead, emphasis should be on the president and on aligning improved reception conditions with existing ideologies and belief systems at this level. These findings do not, however, imply that authoritative political settlements are better for the overall reception of refugees. Rather, it is about finding an approach that works for the unique set of circumstances in a specific context. Thus, conversely, in a more democratic and competitive political settlement like South Africa, approaches to creating change would be better suited at the local level, for example, channelled through grassroots organisations and aimed at shifting the public perception of refugees and their role in the urban space.

The peripheral role of the global refugee regime in shaping refugee reception policies in Southern Africa

Turning to contemporary debates over the role of the ‘global’ in responses to the arrival of refugees in Africa, the book brings new understanding to the relationship between the global refugee regime (via its two main components: the 1951 Refugee Convention and UNHCR) and national and local reception policies in Southern Africa. Traditionally the global refugee regime has dominated research engaged with refugee arrival on the continent. However, this emphasis started to shift from the 2010s, with academic attention moving from the international to local and sub-local levels. From this ground-level perspective, the role of the global regime in relation to refugee protection and movement (especially in the urban space) is commonly dismissed entirely. Instead, contemporary research illustrates how refugees find alternative ways to survive and settle in cities via local networks and ad hoc local-level policy and practice.

The book brings new insights to both these distinct areas of research, by investigating the role of the regime in reception policies in Southern Africa from a state-focused perspective. Firstly, the global refugee regime has limited involvement in the day-to-day practice of reception in Zambia and South Africa. Thus, the book questions the continuing relevance of the ‘global’ in refugee reception in Southern Africa (particularly outside the refugee camp). Secondly, by appraising the role of the regime in reception, the case studies reveal the importance of national legal frameworks and policies in how reception is delivered to refugees on the ground.

When discussing legal and policy frameworks within the context of refugee protection in Africa, the emphasis in the literature has traditionally been at the international level, with commentators observing the role of the 1951 Refugee Convention. In contrast, analysis of the role and power of national and local frameworks, institutions and norms typically remain limited – or their influence on the ground is often dismissed as minor. For example, national law is regularly seen solely as a conduit for the international convention and rights. The book shows a different picture. Indeed, a key contribution is that in Southern Africa, international frameworks seem to have little influence or power over how state actors shape and implement reception policies. Analysis of the global refugee regime by legal scholars within the fields of refugee and forced migration studies often neglect that for many actors working in refugee protection, it remains a relatively remote concept. Instead, it is the national laws, policies and localised norms that are relevant in practice. Thus, in Zambia and South Africa national actors are implementing national and localised norms rather than international ones.

This finding means that while the book questions the relevance of international frameworks in the day-to-day practice of refugee reception in Southern Africa, it nonetheless stops short of dismissing the influence of all governance systems. Researchers such as Schmidt (2014) and Landau (2018a) suggest that attempts by refugees to settle in urban spaces in Africa are based predominantly on impromptu local policy/networks. As seen in the analysis investigating cities such as Johannesburg and Lusaka, these sub-local negotiations do indeed become an essential part of reception processes in Southern Africa. Nevertheless, the book questions whether some contemporary research conducted using a ground-level lens may underestimate the influence that national frameworks and policies have on key actors who engage daily with the reception of refugees. Indeed, as noted above, national-level forms of reception still inform and influence lower-tier ones.

As has become apparent through the case studies, it is not automatic that the global refugee regime retains relevance on the ground in Southern Africa. Indeed, if international frameworks have little influence on reception policies, where then does the regime appear and what is its added value? To develop this line of enquiry, the section turns to consider UNHCR, as the main international actor associated with the regime. The UN agency has equally been the centre of a great deal of academic attention from research addressing the welcome that refugees receive in Africa. In contrast, the role of the host state in refugee reception is frequently framed as a secondary or minor player.

The book found that UNHCR has less influence in Southern Africa than might be expected from existing literature. Indeed, the UN agency essentially adopts a non-interventionist policy in urban spaces within South Africa and Zambia.⁸ This approach, in turn, all but confines the global refugee regime to the refugee camp. This finding highlights a key contradiction concerning the regime and refugee reception. The refugee camp was not originally conceived of as a core element of the global refugee regime. Indeed, most rights contained within the 1951 Refugee Convention relate to the integration of refugees into a host state (Aleinikoff and Zamore, 2019). Yet, although refugee camps are established through the policy decisions taken by host states and international donors and actors from the minority world, these sites have now become synonymous with the regime in Africa. Thus, at the heart of camp-based reception lies a paradox: the global refugee regime, which was designed to convey a wide range of rights to refugees, is confined to a site that it did not create. A site which, by its very presence, inhibits the full implementation of the regime in host countries. The implication of this finding for refugees in Southern Africa (and potentially on the wider continent) is that for them to gain access to the regime (and by extension international protection), they must give up their right to freedom of movement and in many respects dehumanise themselves.

In the context of Zambia, UNHCR is not, however, passive in the geographical confinement of the regime. Contrary to popular opinion in existing literature, the agency readily acquiesces to these restrictions. The host state has on numerous occasions been open to more urban programming or at least has not pushed back when UNHCR, its implementing partners and COR have implemented new initiatives in urban spaces. Yet for historical, material and ideational factors relating to protection and capacity concerns, the UN agency actively chooses to remain predominantly inside the refugee camp.

Turning to the urban space, the lack of a real presence by UNHCR in this reception site underpins and justifies the questioning of the continuing relevance of the global refugee regime in the everyday practice of refugee reception in Southern Africa. Equally, by not engaging with urban refugees in any meaningful way, UNHCR is reinforcing the conceptualisation of the ‘regime refugee’ as being a helpless, sedentary victim in need of international assistance that is delivered solely in refugee camps. When refugees exercise their agency and move to urban areas, they are, for all intents and purposes, leaving the confines of the regime. This is particularly evident in Zambia, where UNHCR explicitly sees refugees choosing between the regime and the urban space.

A similar situation occurs in South Africa, where there is an assumption within the UNHCR in-country office that if refugees required protection or humanitarian assistance, they would have stopped at a refugee camp in a neighbouring state in the region rather than continuing their journeys until arriving at the southern-most country in Africa. An objective of this construction is to confer sufficient agency onto the urban refugee to then relinquish some key obligations imposed by the global refugee regime involving protection and integration. In essence, by moving into cities there is an implication or expectation of self-reliance and resourcefulness. Yet, as highlighted previously, protection concerns remain in these spaces. This overarching approach by UNHCR in Southern Africa leaves most urban refugees to negotiate protection and find alternative forms of reception through the available local and sub-local policies and practices. While many refugees choose to avoid state and international actors and instead to self-settle in cities such as Johannesburg, refugee populations in the case studies have little choice in the matter post registration, as UNHCR actively elects not to engage in meaningful ways in the urban space.

Finally, the construction of the urban refugee as being entirely self-reliant is being replicated at the national level in South Africa. As observed by Schmidt (2014), international factors and domestic factors often interact with each other to influence policies aimed at refugees. In this case, the joint conceptualisation of the ‘urban refugee’ means that refugees’ status is regularly confused with that of other migrants in urban spaces. Indeed, these findings imply that the approach to urban refugees by UNHCR in Southern Africa is reinforcing ‘regime shifting’ in urban spaces. This refers to the slow transfer of refugees from one governance regime to another, which is seeing urban refugees in both states being slowly moved from national refugee frameworks (and to a lesser extent the global refugee regime) to national migration frameworks. Consequently, this is reinforcing a dominant national-level conceptualisation of who a refugee is and where they reside – with ‘regime refugees’ in camp spaces and cross-border (often deemed illegal) migrants in urban spaces.

Based on these findings, the book questions the ongoing relevance of the global refugee regime in the reception of refugees in Southern Africa. In essence, the regime is being confined to the refugee camp. Yet, the refugee camp and urban spaces are becoming ever more connected in the region, with refugees regularly moving between these two reception sites. In turn, increasing numbers of refugees in the region (and on the continent), are rejecting the camp space altogether for cities and town. With the regime being contained within out-of-the-way geographical spaces, there is a danger of it becoming entirely irrelevant to the day-to-day practice of reception for large numbers of refugees in Southern Africa.

These findings also raise challenging questions for research looking at Africa that regularly adopts a Western understanding of refugee protection, with its focus (or at least point of departure) being the international level. In making this observation, it is acknowledged that this book itself is not immune from the same criticism. As an alternative, a reorientation towards the national and local levels, with a focus on the role of national and local law and policy, would go some way to avoiding the risk of over-inflating the influence of the ‘global’ on the protection of refugees. From this vantage point, the relationship between these national and local mechanisms, international norms and bodies and protection mechanisms found at the street level (through sub-local policies and networks) could all be examined with more specificity through a localised lens.

Evaluating the security and stability nexus

Research based on securitisation theory has been a valuable tool in understanding state behaviour towards refugee movement. In South Africa, the securitisation of refugees permeates all levels including state (national and local) and ground-level perspectives. Leaders at both the state and municipality level and local communities all regularly frame cross-border migrants as illegals or criminals. As noted above, these xenophobic narratives feed into state security discourses and are then reinforced by material and ideational concerns over scarce resources and services. The result has been a slow creeping shift in reception policy in South Africa that is seeing the state move away from a free-settlement approach. Indeed, this security lens has reached national-level policy documents and legislation, with the White Paper (DHA, 2017) proposing the removal of all asylum-seekers from the urban space.

The book nevertheless questions some of the broader assumptions that regularly stem from the literature on the securitisation of refugees. Firstly, discussions on securitisation and refugees often originate at the international level, with commentary concerning specific states lacking subtlety or specificity. Secondly, using the work of Vigneswaran and Quirk (2015) as a base, the book interrogated a growing assumption in the literature that states see all cross-border movement of low-skilled migrants and refugees as entirely negative. As identified in the case studies, the situation on the ground in Southern Africa is more complex, with several contradictions existing at the heart of responses to refugee movement. To respond to these points, the book’s overarching state-focused perspective was utilised in conjunction with the introduction of the complementary concept of stability. The aim was to contribute to this body of literature by developing new strands of analysis on the relationship between refugee movement, state structures and reception policies in the context of Southern Africa.

Stability emerges as a dominant motivation behind how refugees are welcomed and treated in Southern Africa. Indeed, the perceived risk of instability and the overriding desire to maintain the status quo (that is, stability) is driving a great deal of national and local policy in relation to the reception of refugees. This finding has two important implications for contemporary debates on security and refugees. Firstly, understanding surrounding the state-based securitisation of refugee movement in the context of Southern Africa should be revisited. As noted above, contemporary research highlights how refugees and migrants are continuously framed as a security threat to a state or society (Buzan et al., 1998; Donnelly, 2017). Yet the reasons why states adopt this approach are less defined, with research often applying broader global or regional trends to state behaviour. For example, in the context of Africa, common reasons cited to explain why states adopt a security lens range from genuine direct and indirect security and capacity issues through to states using the presence of migrants as an ‘opportunity’ to shift blame for underlying structural issues elsewhere (Landau, 2006; Abebe et al., 2019; Chkam, 2016). All these issues materialised in the context of why state bodies at the local and national level in South Africa adopt securitisation tactics. Yet, concerns around stability were constantly raised alongside these other concerns. The empirical data showed that these concerns centred around overstretched services, overcrowding in urban spaces, negative impacts on labour markets, and democratic repercussions in terms of growing tensions within the voting public. Thus, stability emerges as an overarching reason why the state increasingly tries to control the movement of refugees – particularly in and around urban spaces.

Donnelly (2017) proposes that securitisation is a process that is continually negotiated. In this sense, the motivation behind adopting a security lens in respect of refugees is likely to change over time due to differing factors (including material, ideational and institutional) specific to the individual context. In Southern Africa, responses to the movement of refugees twenty years ago revolved around direct security concerns. Indeed, from the 1960s through to the 1980s, the sub-region witnessed a bloody history including the South African anti-apartheid struggle, Rhodesian/Zimbabwean counter-insurgency and liberation war and the Angolan civil war. Yet, with the sub-region now witnessing more peaceful times, the case studies show that when a security lens is used in South Africa, the overarching goal is now more broadly aimed at maintaining stability – or specifically countering the threat of instability that the increased movement of refugees might create.

The second implication arising from the motivating influence of stability over state reception policies is the volatile association that emerges between refugee movement and state structures in the urban space. This association is more nuanced than simply understanding state responses to all refugee movement through a security lens. The adoption of Kotef’s (2015) work on the relationship between the movement of people (‘rooted’ and ‘non-rooted’) and state-based perceptions of stability was instrumental in arriving at these findings. All states attempt to constrain and manage population movement, especially if that movement originates from ‘non-rooted’ persons (Kotef, 2015). Thus, the movement of refugees (as ‘non-rooted’ persons) will always provoke a reaction, with efforts at controlling these specific movements framed as maintaining – or at least creating a perception of – stability and order, rather than restricting or denying freedom. In contrast, the internal migration of ‘rooted’ people, while equally likely to cause forms of instability if occurring in large numbers, is deemed as an essential freedom.

Prohibiting all movement is nevertheless equally improbable and unlikely to be the ultimate aim of a host state’s reception policy. As noted above, to justify policies of non-interference, state officials and UNHCR in both countries understand the movement of refugees in urban spaces (at least on one level) as equating to full human agency. Furthermore, South Africa has essentially maintained a free-settlement approach since the end of the apartheid regime. In Zambia, some movement between the settlements and local communities and larger urban spaces has also always been accepted (either officially or through more tacit means). Indeed, the settlements have created the stability that has enabled this movement. Thus, the inclusion of a stability lens permits the analysis to go further, by engaging with the observed contradictions and paradoxes at the heart of states’ responses to refugee movement. Stopping all refugee movement rarely appears to be the overarching aim of a reception policy. Rather, reception policies are focused on managing movement, to maintain a sense of stability.

These findings (in conjunction with the analysis above) show that a fragile balance emerges between the movement of refugees and responses by host states, with some movement accepted (or even encouraged) provided it adds ‘value’ and does not reach a level that is perceived as unstable. If levels increase too far and a sense of instability is created, then a rupture in the delicate host/guest relationship may occur. The result of this is restricted access for refugees, seen both in terms of the political space and actual geographical space. This reaffirms that urban reception in Southern Africa is a precarious form of reception.

Lastly, these findings have implications for academics (and policy advocates), with the push to convince states in the majority world to open up the urban space to refugees and forced migrants, continuing through livelihood and self-reliance initiatives. There is a need to be cognisant of this brittle association between refugee movement and perceptions of stability/instability. As seen in both case studies, increased movement into urban areas, without corresponding approaches to counter concerns over increased instability will likely cause negative responses at all levels of the state.