South Africa’s borders were opened up in 1994 after Nelson Mandela became president. Since then South Africa has been battling xenophobia as immigrants from African nations started to come to the rainbow nation for a better life away from persecution, civil wars, and extreme poverty. Still, up until 2008 when massive riots broke out in Alexandria Township in Gauteng, xenophobia was an unknown word to most people outside academic, social work, and government circles. This has all changed now as 2008 will in all likelihood be remembered as the year when xenophobic violence erupted in South Africa and became a general feature in our daily media bulletins, prime time television broadcasts, and in our society as a whole. The South African university where the current study took place was also affected by xenophobia although without any displays of public violence. The current study sought to understand and describe the lived experience of xenophobia by individual, international, African students at a South African university. The study adopted a qualitative approach and the methodology used was multiple case studies employing Tesch’s model of content analysis. The findings of the study showed that the research participants, as a combined group, have lived through a wide range of xenophobic experiences excluding physical violence and that the research participants’ personal characteristics influenced their exposure to and experience of xenophobia. The study contributed to the understanding of the lived experience of xenophobia within a South African university by international, African students.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:9944 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Sorensen, Thomas |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Health Sciences |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MA |
| Format | viii, 99 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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