Forced Migration Studies Program, Johannesburg, South Africa
Rebecca Sutton hiking in the South African countryside. |
While completing my Masters in Violence, Conflict and Development at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in England several years ago, I began to follow the work of the Forced Migration Studies Program (FMSP) based at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa. I was intrigued by the centre's focus on migration and displacement within Africa, and after several failed attempts to secure funding to work with the FMSP I gave up but kept in touch. When I began law school and discovered the IHRP summer internship program, I knew I had found the perfect opportunity to finally work with the FMSP. It was quite surreal to finally arrive in Johannesburg after thinking about it for so long, but I was happy to discover that the experience was as worthwhile as I had envisioned.
I worked on two main projects with the FMSP this summer. The first project involved research at the Lindela Detention Centre outside of Johannesburg. Since the end of Apartheid, South Africa has gone from a refugee-producing country to one that absorbs a large number of immigrants and refugees annually. Many individuals have some form of 'irregularity' in their immigration status, such as an expired asylum seeker permit, expired passports and visas, or no papers at all. One of the approaches of the South African government to address such problems has been to arrest individuals and detain them at Lindela until their deportation or release. Many human rights advocates have voiced concern over the situation at Lindela: although ostensibly a purely administrative holding facility, some feel Lindela has a punitive purpose and note the considerable number of individuals who are detained for a prolonged period with no knowledge of the progress of their case.
In response to these and other concerns, the FMSP Migrant Rights Monitoring Project research team developed an in-depth survey that they administered to more than 300 detainees at Lindela. My own role was to develop a qualitative survey that complements this main questionnaire. After I reviewed the main survey I identified gaps and formulated some points and prompts for qualitative interviews that would draw out some of the more pressing or interesting elements of the survey. My questions focused mainly on experiences of prolonged detention, the administration of justice, and the experience of living in legal limbo. Once the questions were approved and I was granted access to the facility, I travelled to Lindela over a period of several weeks and conducted one-on-one qualitative interviews with 25 of the detainees there. While I cannot disclose detailed findings of the interviews as some of the research may be used in litigation, I can say that visiting Lindela and spending time hearing the stories of detainees was truly an eye-opening experience. Given that my Masters thesis focused partly on narratives of refugee identity, I was particularly interested to note that while detainees develop a relatively narrow legal story or legal narrative that they tell to officials and human rights lawyers, they tend to preserve a more subtle, nuanced, and complicated narrative for themselves that more fully encapsulates their life story. Working with the FMSP-whose work is grounded primarily in the social sciences and humanities disciplines-enabled me to go beyond the strictly legal narratives of detainees and develop an appreciation of the myriad contradictions that characterize their migration experience. At the moment, I am working with a research supervisor at the FMSP to prepare a paper for an upcoming conference on citizenship and deportation at Oxford.
The second FMSP project I devoted my time to this summer was researching the response of South Africa's legal system to xenophobic violence in the country. In May 2008, South Africa experienced a rash of xenophobic attacks: the looting, property damage and physical violence were aimed mostly at foreigners. Some believe that these attacks were the result of relative deprivation, as South African citizens felt the presence of a high number of foreigners in the country was diminishing their own opportunities for jobs and housing, or contributing to an increase in crime and insecurity. Others point to the legacy of Apartheid, surmising that efforts to unite black and white South Africans as a nation in the post-Apartheid era fostered an exclusionary logic that left no room in the country for the 'rest of Africa'. Many also argue the attackers were ordered by community leaders and local groups to further their own economic and political interests. While the events and their aftermath - particularly the mass displacement of victims from the communities they lived in to ad-hoc refugee camps throughout the country - received heavy media coverage and generated widespread discussion in the country, little progress has been made by the legal system in bringing the perpetrators of the attacks to justice. In particular, there have been no convictions for rape or murder as of yet and this has resulted in cries condemning the 'culture of impunity'.
As part of my research with the FMSP, I conducted a baseline study on the efficiencies of the criminal justice system in South Africa. The research team is using these findings to discern whether the (lack of a) response by the justice system to the 2008 attacks was in keeping with general inefficiencies of South Africa's legal system, or whether there was something unique about the nature of the attacks that failed to elicit the required response. The FMSP is also interested in uncovering what the key 'sticking points' in the justice process have been. For example, are the gaps mainly in police investigation, apprehension of suspects, evidence gathering, witness availability, and/or prosecutorial capacity at the National Prosecution Authority? The team's research strategy was to 'follow the bodies', beginning at the morgues and ending at the court system. That is, team members visited morgues to determine the number of unnatural deaths in the period around the May 2008 violence. From there, the team developed a list of bodies and followed up with local police to see if a case was opened to investigate each death. Following this, the team determined whether that case went to court, and whether it resulted in a conviction. In doing so, the FMSP is questioning the validity of the official number of murders from the violence (widely thought to be 62) and attempting to bring to light whether the justice system has adequately responded to these murders.
As a complement to the relatively academic nature of my work with the FMSP, I had the exciting opportunity to engage in some hands-on client work with refugee claimants and asylum seekers in Johannesburg. Through a part-time position at the Refugee Rights Clinic of Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) I spent several mornings a week advising clients (mostly in French, as many of my clients were Congolese) and helping them to navigate the immigration and asylum seeker process. For example, I worked on deportation appeals, securing the re-issuance of lost documents, and facilitating resettlement in other counties. It was fascinating to work in such a fast-paced and high stakes environment, and I was grateful to learn such concrete skills from a team of brilliant human rights lawyers.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my experience in South Africa this summer. Every day as I walked through the downtown area to work, I marvelled at the bustling nature of the city and felt glad to have the opportunity to see that Johannesburg is so much more than a place of crime and insecurity: While the 'rainbow nation' is truly a work in progress, South Africa is an endlessly fascinating place to live. The IHRP internship also reminded me of my passion for fieldwork, and I have decided to take a leave of absence from law school in order to work for the NGO War Child Canada in Darfur, Sudan. I am excited to return to U of T law in the fall of 2010 and to continue working with other students and faculty on human rights issues.
