Abstract
The subject of children born to former refugee parent(s) – referred to as second-generation migrants – is under-researched in the context of South Africa. Thus their opinions and views have been marginalised in social science research. This thesis addresses this gap by exploring the complexities of second-generation Mozambican migrant youth’s lived experiences in how they construct their identities and develop a sense of belonging in post-apartheid South Africa, specifically in Bushbuckridge. Bushbuckridge was among the earliest districts to accommodate Mozambican refugees to South Africa in the 1970s and remains associated with large numbers of Mozambicans. Drawing on Crenshaw’s (1989) intersectionality approach and Sen’s (1979) capability approach, this study contributes to knowledge on South-to-South migration by demonstrating how these approaches are operationalised to understand the complex lived experiences and capabilities of a disadvantaged group. In conceptualising the notion of identity among second-generation migrant youth, this thesis explores the history and present of first and second-generation Mozambican migrants in South Africa to reveal how being born to migrant parents and raised in a hosting country complicates one’s identity and sense of belonging. In the quest to form their identities and construct a sense of belonging, migrants established resilient unity, closely linked to Crenshaw’s notion of agency and ‘space’ identity. Bushbuckridge, as a destination for Mozambican migrants, was crucial to their search for social freedom and a space to ‘belong to’. The action of deliberately seeking freedom is an act of agency. Being “youth” is often understood as just a social process while forgetting numerous ways youth actively construct their social world, thus overlooking their capability, a gap that this study aims to cover. This is a case study informed by semi-structured interviews and narrative data gathered from 22 second-generation Mozambican migrant youth between 18 and 34 years who were born to at least one Mozambican parent living in Bushbuckridge and raised in South Africa. Views of two key informants from the South African Department of Home Affairs and the local tribal authority provided additional perspectives on second-generation migrant youth’s lived experiences in Bushbuckridge, which were explored thematically and narratively through Braun and Clarke’s (2012) six-step framework for analysing qualitative data. In exploring the interdependency and interconnectedness of social categories and social systems in Bushbuckridge, the findings revealed that participants’ experiences of identity formation and development of a sense of belonging were marginalised in complex, intersectional and precarious ways where they constantly (re)negotiated their daily experiences, which were largely shaped by their paradoxical migrant status in a host country. A minority of participants reflected weak transnational ties through occasional communications with, visits to and moral support from Mozambique, showing a solid sense of belonging to South African society, but most participants reported no connection with anyone in Mozambique and no plans to ever visit the country. Participants’ experiences illustrated their agency in various ways as they navigated life in a host society. This study found that, in the quest for belonging, migrant youths were not a perfectly integrated category but evolved from almost daily lived experiences of creating a living that gave them an identity and a sense of belonging in South Africa. This study concludes that there is a strong association between feelings of identity, sense of belonging and levels of social integration. It recommends the development and adoption of a multilayer comprehensive model for understanding second-generation migrant youth identity and belonging in South Africa which encourages a collaborative effort among individual migrant youth, their family members, neighbours, society, and regional and national institutional structures for migrants to enhance and harness their capabilities and improve their wellbeing in South Africa.
Keywords: Bushbuckridge, Capability, Experiences, Identity, Intersectionality, Second-generation Mozambican migrant, Sense of belonging, South Africa, Youth.