African Human Mobility Review

Corrigendum

Editorial team — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Editorial

Mulugeta Dinbabo — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Cross-Border Solidarity: Migrant-Led Associations as Spaces of Epistemic Resistance and Food Security Innovation in South Africa

Perfect Mazani — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the midst of closure and securitization of border regimes, climate-change displacement, and entrenched inequalities, migrant communities are not just surviving but creating new sites of resistance, creativity, and adaptation to their worlds in crisis. This paper explores how migrant-solidarity organizations function as epistemic spaces of invention and resistance in South Africa among Zimbabwean, Pakistani, and Cameroonian migrant communities in Parow Valley, Summer Greens, and Kensington (Cape Town). Based on 250 household surveys and 12 qualitative in-depth interviews, the paper explores how migrant-led social movements become sites of agency, social resilience, and resistance to marginalization habitually employed by state policy and academic scholarship. These forms of solidarity networks, which are essentially national in scope, maintain food security at a household level, access to livelihood, and socioemotional well-being. Group savings, mutual support, and rotating credit associations enable these networks to build adaptive capacities to deal with uncertain migration status and socio-economic risk. They constitute resilient, informal social safety nets for food, income, and affective resources that go beyond what formal mechanisms can provide. By situating migrant practice and epistemologies, the paper challenges hegemonic discourses that position migrants as passive. Instead, it positions everyday solidarities at the site of politicized invention and resistance. It situates where these practices intersect with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 (zero hunger), SDG 8 (decent work), and SDG 10 (reduced inequalities). It establishes a decolonial, plural migration knowledge positioning migrants as co-producers, policy entrepreneurs, and change agents.

Strengthened or Sidelined? An Evaluation of Pledges to Eradicate Statelessness in the Southern African Development Community

Sky Kruger, Shazia Sader — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Since 2018, there has been a significant mobilization of developmental funding mechanisms and efforts to facilitate greater burden-sharing among refugee-hosting states and address protracted displacement. The Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) of 2018, seeks to harness this developmental approach – in particular, multi-stakeholder participation and a system of pledge-making – for the benefit of refugees and the communities that host them. Multi-stakeholder participation and pledge-making are common tools of a developmental approach to forced displacement more broadly, as well as statelessness, with the pledging system aiming to galvanize cross-sectoral collaboration, facilitate more predictable funding and provide a mechanism for the tracking of progress. Yet this system is still nascent and it remains unclear whether the long-term progress its enabling framework envisions is currently unfolding. This paper assesses whether the pledging system, as an operationalizing mechanism of the GCR and its framework, has contributed toward the efforts to eradicate statelessness
in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Statelessness in the SADC – as is the case globally – remains a significant issue and an obstacle to accessing basic services and rights. The true scale of statelessness has consistently been difficult to gauge due to the lack of data collection on statelessness by most countries. While states in the region have taken steps to eradicate statelessness, the role that the pledging system plays in this endeavor has received little attention. The pledging system may be able to facilitate multi-stakeholder participation where there is already an impetus, but it is unclear whether it can address the systemic issues, such as discrimination, that underpin statelessness. Further, the pledging system is still in the early stages of configuring measures for transparency and accountability.

Editorial

Mulugeta F. Dinbabo — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Xenophobia in the Media: Critical Global Perspectives

Daniel Tevera — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Constraints and Prospects of Faith-Based Refugee Protection in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya

Kevin Oduor, Edwin Abuya, Martin Ouma — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article investigates three distinct elements of faith-based organizations (FBOs) in refugee protection: their challenges, the appropriate solutions, and the opportunities available for FBOs to leverage. Knowledge about the three elements is critical in helping FBOs function effectively and efficiently. Unlike the relevant existing literature, the article focuses on issues that relate specifically to FBOs, not those that extend to almost all refugee-protection actors. The focus is on FBOs because they are usually the first responders to conflict-related crises, maintain their presence throughout all stages of a conflict, and are identified by the Global Compact on Refugees as key players in protecting refugees. The research collected data from the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya using focus group discussions (FGDs), key informant interviews, and general observations of the refugee environment. It analyzed the data using qualitative content analysis. The results indicate that specific challenges exist for FBOs in refugee protection. Nevertheless, these challenges are not beyond resolution; they merely necessitate a shift in strategy or perspective. Despite the various challenges outlined, the contributions made by FBOs remain substantial and are valued highly by refugees, host communities, and other humanitarian entities. Furthermore, there is considerable potential for enhancing the operational effectiveness of FBOs.

Migration Governance in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities

Peter Mudungwe — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article postulates that, despite its magnitude and positive impact in Africa, the attention accorded to migration, especially migration governance, which is fundamental to the management of migration, is not commensurate with its relative importance. To this end, the study uses qualitative methods to gather and analyze data from published research, policy documents, and evaluations conducted on the subject matter. Based on a literature review on the state of migration governance in Africa and its implications on African countries’ capacity to manage migration, the analysis observes that migration governance is relatively weak. The study attributes this mainly to inadequate resource allocation toward migration management. It unravels the reasons for this modest investment within the framework of public budgeting theories to explain how governments determine resource allocation across different needs. Furthermore, the article documents the substantial contribution of migration toward development in Africa against the relatively meager investments toward migration management. It also documents the substantial donor investments in the migration sector and decries this state of affairs with regard to the continent’s ability to set its migration agenda. The study concludes that the manifestations of weak migration governance are the reduced capacity of Africa to nurture and capitalize on the positive impact of migration, as well as the limitations on its ability to negotiate migration compacts. It recommends that Africa increases its investment in the migration sector as a prerequisite for taking charge of its migration agenda.

Rowing Against Climate Adversity and Lack of Family Support: The Everyday Lives of Migrants’ Wives in Rural Mozambique

Inês Raimundo, Victor Agadjanian — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

There are numerous studies on the participation in migratory work by men from the Gaza Province, whether to the mines in South Africa or Mozambican cities, in particular the city of Maputo. However, studies that analyze the psychosocial conditions of migrants’ wives about their relationships with their family, friends, neighbors, and their teenage children are still incipient. For this reason, we assert that this study is typical of sub-Saharan Africa and reveals the vulnerability of middle-age and aging women. In all these studies, there are common aspects that characterize the vulnerability of married women, widows, or single women with or without children. They live within a patriarchal context that determines who brings the bread, whom they marry, how many children they should have, their role as caretakers of the family, and the roles of the ones who take care of the farm and the elderly. The dominant patriarchal system in southern Mozambique determines a man’s masculinity based on his ability to perform work that generates income for his family. The literature shows that the generational masculine ideology among men in traditional communities begins from childhood and is perpetuated from generation to generation, with the man marrying as many women as he can afford. The female harem is necessary to guarantee the perpetuation of the name or nickname of that lineage. What we endeavor to demonstrate in this article is that all the women’s statements, whether in the focus group discussions (FGDs) or individually, reflect the burden of patriarchal relations still dominant in rural Gazan society. We also show that the organization of labor during crisis situations results in a cascade of events that include: women lacking food and other necessities; women forced to sever their relationships with their in-laws, grown and undergrown children, peers, and relatives. This results in stress and other health-related issues, as well as diminished confidence in planning for the future. The paper aims to respond to these questions: (1) What help do women receive from their children, family, and friends when they have a migrant husband? What kind of help does a migrant wife or ex-migrant wife provide to others? (2)What help do women receive from their children, family, and friends when they have a non-migrant husband? (3) To what extent does this contribute to women’s well-being? (4) What help do mothers give their children?

Curate’s egg: Effects of Parental Migration on Well-being of Zimbabwean Children Left Behind

Edmore Chingwe, Sipelile Munhumayenga, Sibonokuhle Ndlovu, Webster Mudzingwa — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Zimbabwe has a long history of labor migration to Global North nations such as Britain and the United States of America, as well as to several Global South countries like South Africa and Botswana. This migration has seen a surge in remittances, spurring the crafting of policies and strategies to tap into this economic window for national development. While parental migration may be bringing economic relief to the nation and households left behind, it has often been associated with numerous challenges,
particularly in the well-being of children left behind. In exploring challenges faced by children whose parents live and work abroad, a growing body of literature has emerged. This study reviews studies carried out in Zimbabwe on the effects of parental migration on the well-being of children left behind. It used a systematic literature review (SLR) methodology for primary studies deposited in three electronic libraries and downloaded by 31 December 2023. The purpose of the SLR is to develop a basis for empirical research, since this is a new study area in the country. It is anticipated that the study will contribute to the discourse on parental migration and its effects on development and nurturance practices of children left behind. Overall, the study asserts that there are both positive and negative effects of parental migration on children left behind; hence, the phenomenon is regarded as a curate’s egg.