Xenophobic Violence in South Africa:
Critical Reflections on Current explanations
Jean Pierre Misago
ACMS-University of the Witwatersrand
[email protected]
HSRC Seminar
Pretoria, 30 June 2015
www.migration.org.za
The African Centre for Migration & Society at Wits
An internationally engaged; Africa-oriented; and African-based research
and teaching centre dedicated to shaping academic and policy debates
on migration, development and social transformation
• Graduate degree programmes (Hons, MA, PhD) with students from
across Africa, North America, and Europe;
• Research in 12 African countries on issues related to migration,
urbanisation, human rights, development, governance, and social
change;
• Partnerships in 4 continents;
• Provides research services and support to government, international
organizations, local NGOs, and rights advocates.
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Main Arguments
• Most current explanations are valuable in describing the socio-economic and
political context but they fall short as scientific explanations for the occurrence
of the violence
• Only a multivariate explanatory model can account for all the determinants of
the violence
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Methods
• A decade of ACMS quantitative and qualitative research; on-going
• PhD work
• All together, more than 30 case studies across the country (latest Soweto)
 Focus on explaining violence and not attitudes
 ‘Most similar systems’ approach to understand why violence in some areas and not in
others
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Conceptual clarifications
• Xenophobia =/= Xenophobic violence: Violence is
not a quantitative degree of conflict (Blubaker et al.
1999)
•
This discussion about causal explanations of xenophobic
violence and not of xenophobia.
• Xenophobia or just criminality? Not mutually
exclusive
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Current Causal Explanations: Not these….
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Current Causal Explanations: These rather….
• Can be grouped into 3 main categories:
 Economic and material:
Competition for scarce resources and opportunities;
poverty, inequality, unemployment; Service Delivery Failures; Mass Influx and Inadequate
Border Control (invoking The ‘threshold of tolerance’ hypothesis: the greater the numbers
of migrants in a context of deep dislike , the more violent the reaction (Relative deprivation
theory).
 Historical, political and institutional:
the legacy of apartheid (segregation,
isolation policies, etc.), the impact of post-apartheid nation-building efforts and the failure
to meet socio-economic expectations.
 Psycho-social: cultural stereotyping, repressed historical trauma, culture of violence.
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Current Causal Explanations: Shortcomings
• Common and long standing: cannot explain violence in some areas and not in
others with similar socio-economic conditions
• Reductionist, one-factor, mono-causal explanations: can be at best partial or
incomplete.
• Biggest problem: they do not seem to recognise their limitations. They claim to be all
encompassing i.e. to account for all the elements of the causal chain.
 What these explanations really do is to describe the conditions prevailing in affected
areas; they do not explain how these conditions exactly lead to mass violence
targeting foreign nationals.
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Determinants of Xeno violence
(or elements of the violence causal chain)
• Deprivation: real or relative
• Belief: that foreigners are the cause of the
deprivation
• Collective discontent towards foreigners
• Micro-politics
&
political
economy:
instrumental motives of instigators
• Mobilization of the discontent: the trigger
• Governance and social controls: favorable
opportunity structure for violence
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Conclusion: Towards a Multivariate Model of Xeno Violence
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Explanations
Determinants
Multivariate Model of Xenophobic Violence
Micro-politics and
Political economy
(intervening variable)
Deprivation__________Belief__________Discontent______________________________Mobilization______________________________Xenophobic violence
Instrumental motives
of violence
entrepreneur s i.e.
instigators’ political
and economic
incentives
Real or
perceived socioeconomic and
political
deprivation
Xenophobic
attitudes and
belief attributing
deprivation to
foreign nationals
Belief leads to
collective
discontent and
strong
resentment
towards foreign
nationals



Relative
deprivation


Scapegoating
model
Real conflict
theory

Framing
theory
Favourable governance
factors and social
controls provide a
political opportunity
structure for
mobilization to succeed
in triggering violence
Trigger: violence
entrepreneurs mobilize
discontented members
of the community for
violence

Associated theories
Governance
(intervening variable)
Outbreak of violence as a
result of value -added process :
each determinant playing its
specific and indispensable role

Elite manipulation
theory
Rational choice
Greed and
grievance theory

Mobilization of
discontent model
(my innovation)
Political
opportunity
structure model

A multivariate model
(my suggestion)
www.migration.org.za
Xenophobic Violence in South Africa:
Critical Reflections on Current explanations
Jean Pierre Misago
ACMS-University of the Witwatersrand
[email protected]
HSRC Seminar
Pretoria, 30 June 2015
www.migration.org.za