This thesis analyses how South African former immigrants and refugees in Botswana have established transnational connections between their country of origin and their country of migration since 1957. The thesis develops across two main and overlapping strands: transnationalism and citizenship. Considering transnationalism, it argues that the migrants that have crossed the border from South Africa to Botswana (economic immigrants, refugees and freedom fighters) have established multi-layered transnational connections that stretch from their personal identity to the economic and political fields. These connections are contextualised within the broader labour migration movement in southern Africa and the anti-apartheid struggle. Furthermore, these links have allowed migrants to create a sense of community in solidarity with the struggle against white minority rule and to create spaces to set their survival strategies in order for them to decide, among a range of opportunities, what was most convenient to them. In this way, Botswana’s role as a transit corridor for refugees assumed different social meanings: a route to the northern territories of the continent, a temporary solution, a permanent settlement, a passage to return to South Africa for trained saboteurs. Considering citizenship, the thesis shows that South African migrants have conceptualised citizenship taking into account their transnational links but also Botswana’s processes of nation-building and citizenship construction. Migrants’ understanding of citizenship not always reflects Botswana’s official discourse. Because of this, migrants’ process of integration intertwined with their ways to cope with perceptions of discrimination and exclusion that have emerged in Botswana as a result of the nation-building process that privileges the eight Tswana tribes over minorities and naturalised citizens. This thesis is based on original research which drew on a number of methods including archival research and oral histories. It is also interdisciplinary in focus, drawing mostly on literature from sociology, history and migration studies, but also anthropology, geography and international relations. It thus contributes to debates on transnationalism, on citizenship in Botswana and on the country’s role in the South African liberation struggle.

African immigrants in contemporary South Africa can be perceived as a problem – the threatening other. Based on a case study of the Johannesburg inner city, this thesis aims to deconstruct this notion. It does so by investigating the nature and types and contribution of African immigrant traders` businesses to the Johannesburg inner city. In deconstructing the perception that African immigrants are the threatening other, and being infinitely aware that perception issues and the experiential realities hospitable to its centred on the human subject, this case study adopted a humanist geographic and critical realist approach by deploying a qualitative in-depth interview technique of both African immigrant and South African traders. This thesis suggests three important outcomes. The first is that: to view all African immigrants as the threatening other is too simplistic an assessment of an otherwise complex and dynamic set of relationships and interrelationships amongst and between African immigrant and South African traders. Second, some African immigrant traders do make a meaningful contribution to the Johannesburg inner city, whereas others do not. Third, the activities of African immigrant traders that may be considered as a threat by a section of the population are treated as a benefit by another. These nuanced insights and findings in this study not only render any analysis that projects all African immigrants negatively as an incomplete appraisal, but also suggest that it can never be correct to view them as such without capturing the dynamics that this work suggests. Such a finding not only challenges distorted and partial reporting by the media and also questions policies, which may be built on the wrong assumption that all African immigrants are a problem, but also extends the study of migration related issues in a South African context. / Geography / D. Litt. et. Phil. (Geography)

Text in English / Early migration across borders predominantly involved movement by males for work. While changing times have seen a considerable increase in the number of female migrants as principal migrants solely for independent employment, women still move as passive participants, who have to play an often obscure supporting role beside men. Through a qualitative, exploratory research design, this thesis explored the lived experiences of accompanying immigrants, particularly women from other African countries, accompanying their immigrant spouses in South Africa. Data collection was conducted through individual face-to-face unstructured in-depth interviews with eight female accompanying spouses. The data were thematically analysed and yielded seven overarching themes, namely: motivation to relocate and power dynamics; effects of migration; how accompanying immigrant status is experienced by the female accompanying spouse; challenges immigrants that hold accompanying spouse status face; meaning-making, adaptation; and strategies deployed to cope. These were discussed in terms of the construction of the ‘accompanying spouse status’ and how this powerful social discourse impacts women’s wellbeing. Participants reported education, socioeconomic factors and related life aspects were amongst the motivations for their relocation to South Africa, in addition to citing both positive and negative effects of their migration. From the study results, accompanying spouses recounted how they encountered various adversities, including how accompanying spouse status fundamentally reduces the holder to a dependent, whose being revolves around the principal migrant spouse. Notwithstanding participants’ struggles, the study results show how the participants have, through it all, learnt to live with their status, deployed methods of coping against all odds, and today still stand. / Psychology / Ph. D.(Psychology)