UNACCOMPANIED YOUNG MIGRANTS AND HOST COMMUNITIES

Relationships between host communitiesFootnote ² and migrating populations are often characterised in migration discourse by different levels of inclusion and exclusion. Immigrants, especially those who cross borders in unregulated manners, are often perceived as a threat to public order and stability (Lazaridis Reference Lazaridis2016). They are blamed for competing with local, marginalised populations over the same resources, and are viewed as a threat to identities (Harris Reference Harris, Hook and Eagle2002). Seen as a burden and as a hazard, it is clear why, as Okello (Reference Okello2014: 70) notes, ‘hosting communities have become increasingly hostile to refugees’. Nevertheless, there is much more to these relationships than hostility, as mutuality often evolves. Host societies come to rely on resources and vital contributions provided by unregulated immigrants and therefore assist them in finding ways around excluding migration regimes (see Ambrosini Reference Ambrosini2013; Burchardt & Michalowski Reference Burchardt and Michalowski2015).

Conviviality has provided an alternative conceptualisation for relationships between host and migrant communities. Nyamnjoh (Reference Nyamnjoh2017) views conviviality as the recognition of incompleteness of ourselves and of everything and everyone around us, and the act of complementing ourselves and the world we live in with the incompleteness of others. Treating the incompleteness of ourselves and of others as a source of potency allows us to carefully negotiate collective interest in a way that empowers the individual and the group, and accommodates togetherness without compromising one's autonomy (Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2017). In migratory contexts, Chekero & Morreira (Reference Chekero and Morreira2020) argue that conviviality transcends multiple dualisms between foreign and local, legal and illegal, xenophobia and social acceptance. It is the socialisation of citizens and migrants beyond co-existence, ‘stressing interconnections, dialogue, collaboration, interdependence and compassion’ (Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2017: 266), though without the disappearance of boundaries between the locals and the foreigners. As Elias & Scotson (Reference Elias and Scotson1994) suggest, conviviality among migrants and locals is entrenched relationships between those considered to be established and those considered outsiders.

Agency is at the core of conviviality among migrant and local populations (see Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2002; Hay Reference Hay2014), since conviviality is built upon migrants’ ability to express and perform their agency and actively form relationships with host communities. Yet agency is not a static concept. It is everchanging and influenced by space and time, by structures and people. According to Nyamnjoh (Reference Nyamnjoh2002: 256), ‘Agency is not a birthmark or permanence, but something to be discovered, cultivated, nurtured, activated and reactivated to different degrees of potency through relationships with others’. Thus, agency is elastic. It evolves and reshapes. It requires and reactivates potency through connections to others and depends on the active participation of both migrants and locals.

Yet what happens when the migrants are young and unaccompanied? Is it possible to imagine conviviality when the migrants are children on the move? As young, unaccompanied and undocumented, they are highly vulnerable. They are positioned in a precarious setting and thus are extremely dependent on others. Nevertheless, they are crossing borders on their own, making decisions, taking actions and surviving despite the precarity of their lives. Therefore, viewing them only as helpless and fragile does not do justice.

Contemporary childhood studies reject modernist characterisations of children as silent or dependent subjects (Mayall 2013) and seek to reposition them as agents that take an active part in the world. Led by the new paradigm of childhood, a vast body of knowledge challenges characteristics such as irrationality and helplessness as child-like. It shows that children are deprived of the ability to speak, to have an impact over their own lives and to be regarded as political subjects. This scholarship promotes children's agency and demands a space for children's voices in the so-called adult-world (Jenks Reference Jenks1982; Mayall 2013). As Prout & James (Reference Prout and James1997: 8) articulate, ‘Children are and must be seen as active in the construction and determination of their own social lives, the lives of those around them and of the societies in which they live’. Since childhood shapes agency in particular ways, children's participation in the world should be studied, analysed and conceptualised as such (See Jenks 1982; Prout & James Reference Prout and James1997; Mayall 2013).

The new paradigm of childhood influenced scholarship focusing on unaccompanied child and youth migration. In the past, unaccompanied child migrants were identified as one of the most precarious and vulnerable populations. Quite justifiably, the need to protect them was emphasised in research and policymaking (Goździak Reference Goździak, Ensor and Goździak2010). At the same time, it has been widely claimed that the representation of unaccompanied children as traumatised victims of exploitation leaves little room to consider their agency. According to Ensor (Reference Ensor, Ensor and Goździak2010), the depictions of their passivity have flattened out their experiences and overlooked the immense complexities of their lives. Recent scholarship reacts to these critiques and emphasises child migrants’ resilience, decision making, and ability to navigate their lives within the constraints of their worlds (see Punch Reference Punch2007; Hashim & Thorsen Reference Hashim and Thorsen2011).

The vast interest in unaccompanied migrating children's agency, however, has been insufficiently applied in the study of their relationships with their host societies, leaving little room for imagining conviviality. Two central scholarly tendencies overshadow thoughts about mutuality and reciprocity in this context. First, the literature depicts a rather dichotomous attitude of host societies toward unaccompanied minors, as either protective or rejecting (see Bhabha Reference Bhabha2000; Goździak Reference Goździak, Ensor and Goździak2010; Kohli Reference Kohli2011). Second, the existing literature overemphasises host societies as determining the nature of the relationships with unaccompanied children and youth, while marginalising the latter's active role in their formation (see Bernard & Gupta Reference Bernard and Gupta2008; Sloth-Nielsen & Ackermann Reference Sloth-Nielsen and Ackermann2016). The dichotomy of rejection versus protection and the marginalisation of children's roles in forming sociality within their host communities, push aside thoughts of conviviality.

This article argues that unaccompanied child and youth migrants play underappreciated roles in shaping conviviality with their host communities. Their gradual participation in local socioeconomic dynamics shifts relationships which are initially based on protection or rejection, to be mutually rewarding. Focusing on the experiences of young Zimbabweans at the South African borderland, we see that while unaccompanied children and youth were extremely vulnerable in the face of violence and xenophobia at the beginning, they acquired knowledge and skills over time. Making considerable efforts to become contributing participants in their environments, they built reciprocal socioeconomic dynamics with their host communities. By identifying opportunities, becoming knowledgeable, developing skills, and using their acquired expertise for the wellbeing of others, they played a key role in forming conviviality at the borderland.

FIELDWORK AND METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The article is based on ethnographic research conducted during two visits to Harare during 2014–2015, and a nine-month stay at the Zimbabwean–South African borderland in 2016–2017, in Musina, South Africa, and in Beitbridge, Zimbabwe.Footnote ³ Ethnographic work was conducted in two shelters in Musina, one for boys and one for girls;Footnote ⁴ each hosted 30–40 unaccompanied children and youth at the time. Fieldwork was also conducted in public spaces in Musina, mostly with children and youth living in the streets or with their employers, and at the South African side of the border checkpoint, in a small informal business site.

The target population was children and youth, 12–24 years old, who migrated independently before the age of 16. Data collection was based on ethnographic work that included various forms of interviews according to participants’ age, and willingness.Footnote ⁵ In addition, participatory observations and deep hanging out were carried out throughout my stay at the borderland, mainly in the shelters, the streets, the border checkpoint, youths’ workspaces and my apartmentFootnote ⁶ which some participants visited on a regular basis. Participants’ names were changed for their protection and wellbeing. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with NGO and community-based organisations’ staff, shelters’ staff and management, transporters, employers and teachers. A thematic data analysis method was employed. Throughout my fieldwork at the borderland, I had the privilege of working with two research assistants in different periods, Nyasha Vuranda and Peter Uledi, who both played a vital role in this research.

There are numerous ethical considerations in research such as this. Age and status are prominent categories that intersect when working with unaccompanied minors, emphasising participants’ hyper vulnerability which must be considered (see Kohli Reference Kohli2006). My foreignness and whiteness were influential, and numerous layers of mistrust had to be worked through to create a comfortable setting for the participants (see Mackenzie et al. Reference Mackenzie, McDowell and Pittaway2007). I found ethnography to be the best form of engagement setting since it provided the participants and myself time to get to know one another. It enabled the participants to decide the level of interaction and closeness, and to change their participation decisions according to their own will (see Swartz Reference Swartz2011).

MIGRATION TO THE ZIMBABWEAN–SOUTH AFRICAN BORDERLAND

Zimbabwe has long been at the centre of migration flows. Families that spread and extend across Zimbabwe's national borders, commercial and labour dynamics in Southern Africa, droughts and famines, have all shaped regional migration as a commonplace phenomenon (Tevera & Zinyama Reference Tevera and Zinyama2002; Crush & Tevera Reference Crush and Tevera2010). From the end of the 1990s, Zimbabwe suffered negative growth, inflation, unemployment and deepening poverty (Sachikonye Reference Sachikonye2002; Ranger Reference Ranger2004). The socioeconomic and political crisis peaked in 2008–2009, with hyperinflation and skyrocketing unemployment. The health and education systems nearly collapsed. Alongside the HIV/AIDS pandemic and violent election campaigns, Zimbabwean society experienced an unprecedented national trauma, expressed, among other things, in mass migration. Much of that migration was directed to South Africa (Crush & Tevera Reference Crush and Tevera2010).

There are no reliable estimates of Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa, and data seem to be influenced by political agenda rather than by facts (Crush & Tevera Reference Crush and Tevera2010; Stupart Reference Stupart2016). It has been commonly estimated that 1.5–3 million Zimbabwean migrants live in South Africa (Crush & Tevera Reference Crush and Tevera2010; Segatti Reference Segatti, Segatti and Landau2011), among them unaccompanied children and youth who cross the border looking for work, education opportunities, or a way to reunite with family members. According to a former IOM representative in Zimbabwe, unaccompanied minors constitute 1–3% of Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa, indicating that tens of thousands of unaccompanied children crossed the border to South Africa since the early 2000s.

Following the fall of the apartheid regime, South Africa became a continental destination for people fleeing political conflicts, wars, violence, poverty and unemployment, which created one of the most volatile migratory collisions of our times (Landau Reference Landau2005; Segatti Reference Segatti, Segatti and Landau2011). The South African government adopted a narrow interpretation of the Refugee Act concerning Zimbabwean migrants, making refugee status determination inaccessible to most of them (de Jager & Musuva Reference de Jager and Musuva2016). There seems to be a gap in the case of unaccompanied minors, between South Africa's constitution that expresses obligation towards their wellbeing, and the reality in which migrating children are often neglected and rights are being overlooked (Chiguvare Reference Chiguvare2011). As the country has been struggling with its own alarming rates of child abuse and neglect, and as HIV/AIDS and poverty take a grave toll on the South African family structure (Seedat et al. Reference Seedat, van Niekerk, Jewkes, Suffla and Ratele2009),Footnote ⁷ migrating children's rights are being overlooked.

In addition to excluding policies, South Africa has been acknowledged as one of the most hostile destinations in the world for African migrants (Claassen Reference Claassen2017). Rejection and exclusion are experienced daily, through alienation and hostility of local populations towards Zimbabweans, including xenophobic attacks, abuse and murder (Crush Reference Crush2001; Landau Reference Landau2005). Among the victims are also unaccompanied children and youth who experience violence and rejection during border-crossing, in public urban spaces and in schools (see Fritsch et al. Reference Fritsch, Johnson and Juska2009; Nyuke Reference Nyuke2013; Crush & Tawodzera Reference Crush and Tawodzera2014; Morreira Reference Morreira2015).

Yet there are different tales of migration to be told. Supported by alternative views from other parts of South Africa (see Hay Reference Hay2014; Chekero & Morreira Reference Chekero and Morreira2020), the Zimbabwean–South African borderland also shows more complex dynamics. While the findings from this study support previous arguments concerning xenophobia and violence, they also reveal that after a certain period, children and youth were able to form other relationships with local communities based on mutual interests and reciprocity. Since most of the participants in this study have been staying at the borderland since 2008, when Zimbabwe's socioeconomic and political crisis hit rock bottom, it was possible to investigate the formation of their connections with local host communities as a process. Their long presence at the borderland provides a unique analytical point of view into the implications of time on relationships between unaccompanied young migrants and host communities.

While the borderland was a migratory space historically, during the crisis of 2008, thousands of people were crossing the border from Zimbabwe to South Africa daily, turning the borderland into an emergency zone. The municipality of the border town of Musina designated the town's concert outdoor space called the Showground to serve as a refugee settlement from July 2008 to April 2009. The conditions at the Showground were tough, and the area became dangerous as crime and health hazards increased (Mahati Reference Mahati2015). After the haphazard refugee camp was closed in May 2009, the local community was confronted with what the media called ‘a human tsunami’ of Zimbabweans. Extensive media coverage attracted international NGOs who intervened in the crisis and provided assistance to undocumented migrants (Elphick & Amit Reference Elphick and Amit2012).

Community-based organisations undertook a leading role in addressing the specific needs of children and youth (Elphick & Amit Reference Elphick and Amit2012). The most significant response was initiated by the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern AfricaFootnote ⁸ (URCSA) that established a shelter for unaccompanied minors in 2009, managed by the Christian Women's Ministries (CWM). With the assistance of the UNHCR, CWM opened another shelter in 2010, separating the girls from the boys. Save the Children, the South Africa Red Cross Society (SARCS), IOM and the Department of Social Development (DSD) have all been involved in this project in various forms and timeframes, yet it is the CWM congregation that has kept the shelters operational throughout the years. Jacob Matakanye, the manager of Messina Legal Advice Office (MLAO) and a board member of CWM, reflected on the establishment of the shelters: ‘Musina is a small town. We have street kids in big towns like Jo'burg, Pretoria, but Musina didn't have that … We had seen them in town in any open space begging and they were sleeping in the streets. We came together and said, “how can we help these kids who are sleeping at open spaces and they are open for abuse, for anything?” We negotiated with the churches to accommodate these kids’ (Matakanye 2016 Int.). In retrospect, the shelters were far from providing adequate places of safety. With acute lack of funds and unprofessional staff, children's basic needs were often neglected (Chiguvare Reference Chiguvare2011; Mahati Reference Mahati2015). Chiguvare (Reference Chiguvare2011: 10) describes the living conditions at the shelters as ‘inhumane’. Mahati (Reference Mahati2015) argues that politicised decision-making processes led to children's resentment towards the staff of the shelters. Nevertheless, by examining children and youth's participation in forming relationships with various members in their host communities, we come to see other facets of interaction in monitored environments, such as schools and shelters, and unmonitored environments such as the border checkpoint area.

BOUNDED BY PROTECTION AND REJECTION

In their journeys from their homes in Zimbabwe, unaccompanied children and youth reached the border with plans to settle down in different locations. Some wished to reunite with family members in South Africa, others wished to find ways to resume their education, and many were desperate to find employment. Since migration was common, almost everyone knew someone who ‘made it’ in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban, and other cities. Children and youth arrived at the border area with an idea of going to these cities, without knowing how distant these cities are from the border checkpoint and without having any means to pay for the journeys. While many managed to find ways of moving on to other places, others were stranded at the borderland, where they had to find ways to survive.

Stuck at the borderland, many young Zimbabweans went to work in farms while others continued walking to the nearest border town (Musina) (Figure 1), where they lived in the streets, in shelters or with employers. Some stayed at the South African side of the border checkpoint, where an informal business area had sprung up to provide various services to travellers, truck drivers, officers and soldiers. Regardless of the differences in each location, young participants shared common experiences of vulnerability and dependency during the initial stage of their lives across the border.

Figure 1. The Zimbabwean–South African borderland (Google Earth 2021).

The vulnerability that children experienced was mostly expressed in violence and abuse, and the inability to fight back or stand up for themselves. Crossing international borders often entails life-threatening risks such as trafficking, violence, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), abuse and exploitation (see Bhabha Reference Bhabha2000; Seugling Reference Seugling2004). Natural hazards, abusive intermediaries and various nefarious agents shadow those who migrate without proper documentation. For children, most of all girls but also young boys, these unprotected spaces are particularly threatening. They are threatening not only when trying to cross them but simply by being in their surroundings (see Baldwin-Edwards Reference Baldwin-Edwards2005; Helleiner Reference Helleiner2013). Young migrants must hone survival coping mechanisms and endure violence as a matter of routine (Baker & Shalhoub-Kevorkian Reference Baker and Shalhoub-Kevorkian1999).

The Zimbabwean–South African borderland is a hyper-violent space that has been widely acknowledged as particularly dangerous for women and children on the move (see Fritsch et al. Reference Fritsch, Johnson and Juska2009; Nyuke Reference Nyuke2013; Mahati Reference Mahati2015; Morreira Reference Morreira2015). Both at the border checkpoint and Musina, many young participants were exposed to violence at the hands of state representatives, employers, local community members and peers. They were at risk of being arrested and deported, and experienced constant physical threats, harassment and beatings. Since their stay in South Africa was illegal, they could not turn to the police and reach out for help or protection.

I met 21-year-old Adam in the Musina shelters, two years after he graduated from high school. After crossing the border for the first time, he spent three months at the border checkpoint when he was 14 years old. When he realised that I was also working at the border, he told me: ‘It's very tough because if the police catch you, they will beat you … I was beaten up several times … Sometimes they can even beat you that when you go, you can't sit down. You will lie down on the stomach for two days’ (Adam 2017 Int.). Violence was not only carried out by the police and the security forces but also by locals, as 23-year-old Jimmy, who has been living at the border checkpoint since he was 15 years old, said: ‘It's very dangerous … That's where people are getting robbed … raped, killed. They ambush you. They can even hide behind rocks, behind trees, sneaking, so when they see people – you can't run away … You just stand there and let them do what they want. Then they release you. Sometimes, if you have bad luck, they can even kill you’ (Jimmy 2016 Int.). The ongoing potential for violent encounters shaped the everyday life at the border checkpoint. As young, newcomers, foreign and illegal, children and youth felt helpless and at times had to endure whatever was coming their way.

Violence and rejection were also characteristics of the initial stay in the streets of Musina. Melvin, Tavonga and Ray had lived on the streets for less than a year when we met, and they were surviving by begging and doing piecemeal work. In a group interview, they painfully described locals' negative sentiments towards them: ‘People think we are bad people because we are street kids … We will die here because people think we are delinquents … They can do anything to us’ (Melvin, Tavonga, and Ray 2016 Int.). Exposed to maltreatment, abuse and violence carried by locals and by the authorities, they felt helpless and were afraid for their lives.

Participants were exposed to violence and robbery even at the shelters. Bongani, aged 17, who had been living in the shelter since 2009, shared his views about the violence, robbery and helplessness he felt when he was a young child: ‘Somebody could come and say, “you are a Zimbabwean”, and steal something from you because he knew that you have nothing to do … They used to beat us because they knew that we didn't have back-up … They hate foreigners. Once they saw that I have a phone – they took it … They knew that if I go and report the case to the police … they can arrest me.’ (Bongani 2017 Int.). While the shelter was safer than the streets or at the border checkpoint, abuse, exploitation and violence took place there as well. Similar to other spaces, as newcomers, children and youth felt that there was nothing they could do to stop it.

Xenophobia was discussed often among the participants in this research. It was not only the violence of it but the humiliation and the hatred. It was especially hurtful when it was expressed by people who were supposed to provide protection and assistance, particularly in the schools. Thirteen-year-old Ryan had arrived at the shelter a year before our conversation. He recounted: ‘Sometimes the SepediFootnote ⁹ teacher doesn't treat me well … During the reading time, I fail to read, and she can say “you Zimbabweans came here to trouble us’” (Ryan 2017 Int.). The classroom, particularly the home language class, was often experienced as a space of rejection, where Zimbabwean children's academic difficulties were responded to by anti-immigration expressions of teachers and students.

Children and youth's testimonies shed light on their initial encounters with the local host communities as one-sided. Since they were foreign, unfamiliar and extremely vulnerable, they were in the hands of locals who either protected them, as in the case of the CWM, or abused them, such as in the cases of the violence and rejection they had to endure from various people around them. Their stories support the general tendency to depict relationships between unaccompanied migrant children and their hosts as a dichotomy of protection versus rejection and as actively shaped by host communities and not so much by the children and youth themselves. As demonstrated in the next section, the difference in young people's ability to participate in these relations was time, perseverance and calculated use of their stay at the borderland. By accumulating knowledge, developing skills and mobilising opportunities to engage with the local communities, they were able to offer some services in return to their host communities, changing the initial one-sided dynamics and making room for conviviality.

FORMING CONVIVIALITY

Unaccompanied young migrants are known for their productivity and innovativeness. Research from various parts of the world, including South Africa, shows that they generate independent lines of work, operate business initiatives, take care of their families and search for better education opportunities (see Punch Reference Punch2007; Huijsmans Reference Huijsmans2008; Hashim & Thorsen Reference Hashim and Thorsen2011; Nyuke Reference Nyuke2013; Mahati Reference Mahati2015). They have been widely acknowledged to be active and resourceful, not only in their decisions to migrate and their journeys, but also in rebuilding their lives across national borders. Examining boys and young men's engagements with securitisation and cross-border trade at the border checkpoint and their academic proficiency in Musina, sheds light on their ability to mitigate against their disempowerment through mobilisation of knowledge and skills.

YOUNG MIGRANTS AND THE POTENTIAL OF CONVIVIALITY

The Zimbabwean–South African borderland provides two distinct and unique arenas of conviviality among unaccompanied young migrants and their host communities. One is a space of illegality, informality, extremity. It reveals a radical shift in power relations in which unaccompanied migrants with illegal status became protectors of the space and of the people who assisted them. The second is a monitored space of so-called normalcy, in which children and youth were able to provide academic assistance for locals, despite being unaccompanied and foreign. They changed the perception that foreignness comes with lack of knowledge, raised the regional school pass rates, and assisted local struggling families. In both spaces, children and youth were acting in their own interest and for the wellbeing of others. They were able to do so because they had local counterparts who were doing the same. Together, they were gradually forming conviviality in unexpected manners.

Conviviality is necessarily relational, and thus, to see its potential, it is necessary to take a step back from common protection/rejection discourses that overlook the complexities and marginalise children and youth's participation in forming relationships with their hosts. Conviviality requires that we embrace the idea that children's worlds are not separate from the worlds of adults. Rather, they are intertwined. Conviviality serves as a framework that brings vulnerability and agency together in a manner that does not overshadow one or the other, since it is based upon acknowledging incompleteness. All are vulnerable and all are potent. All cope with their vulnerabilities by joining others in a way that maintains the self, facilitates togetherness, and provides a way of complementing one another.

Time has multiple functions in conviviality among young migrants and local communities, and not only because of the obvious aspects of growing up. Naturally, it is expected that when unaccompanied children and youth grow up, they learn new things and develop skills (see Kohli & Kaukko Reference Kohli and Kaukko2017; Grabska Reference Grabska2019). Yet this research reminds us that age is only a part of it. At the borderland, children at the age of 13 were living in conviviality with their host communities while some 18-year-old youths were not, since it takes acquaintance, understanding of the space and the people, and acquiring local knowledge. As Costa (Reference Costa2019) acknowledges, conviviality is a process that constitutes and transforms over time. The case in point provides a living example of this meaningful understanding, as it shows conviviality in the making. Time enabled those with very little power to accumulate knowledge, develop needed skills and contribute to the people around them, while supporting and empowering themselves and shifting power relations. Respectively, time was functional in reshaping locals’ perceptions of unaccompanied child and youth migrants, from viewing them as dependent, needy, poor and estranged to people who have much to offer.

In this spirit, it is easy to become enamoured with the idea of conviviality. Conviviality brings comfort and faith to realities that are often portrayed as exploitative, unjust and cruel. But the view from the borderland explicitly shows that the foundations of conviviality among unaccompanied child and youth migrants and local populations are economic and social interests. It does not, in any way, suggest a disappearance of boundaries. Chekero & Morreira (Reference Chekero and Morreira2020) rightly argue that conviviality among migrants and locals influences the strict distinctions between outsiders and insiders, yet we should be sceptical about its ability to erase or even blur these distinctions. It may lessen the distance and provide access to social, economic and political spaces, yet its ability to transcend the core distinctions between the self and the other, the local and the foreign, the insider and the outsider, should be considered cautiously.