Months and years of research go into dissertations and theses only for most of them to lie on a shelf collecting dust... so I decided to make use of my undergraduate thesis on South Africa's migration policy, and turn it into a Harvard Africa Policy Journal blog post.
I once heard a very depressing statistic that 40 percent of World Bank reports have been downloaded fewer than 100 times, so hoping for better results with this article. If you're interested in reading the larger work, give me a shout here.
Abstract of the full-length thesis:
During the Apartheid era, the mobility of black Africans, both those native to South Africa and those from other countries, was strictly regulated. Citizenship was defined as white citizenship against black “others.” Since independence from white-majority rule, South Africa, a country, which has built its modern democracy on inclusivity, has witnessed a rise in xenophobia and violence against migrants. In examining the dynamics of xenophobia towards Zimbabweans, the country’s largest migrant group, this paper argues that the persecution of migrants is tied to the persistent legacy of apartheid, rampant economic inequality, and the international relations of the African National Congress.