Table Of ContentSURVIVAL MIGRATION
SURVIVAL
MIGRATION
Failed Governance and the Crisis of
Displacement
Alexander Betts
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON
Copyright © 2013 by Cornell University
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First published 2013 by Cornell University Press
First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2013
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Betts, Alexander, 1980–
Survival migration : failed governance and the crisis of displacement /
Alexander Betts.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8014-5106-5 (cloth : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-8014-7777-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Refugees—Africa, Sub-Saharan—Case studies. 2. Political refugees—
Africa, Sub-Saharan—Case studies. 3. Forced migration—Africa, Sub-Saharan—
Case studies. 4. Human rights—Africa, Sub-Saharan—Case studies. 5. Africa,
Sub-Saharan—Emigration and immigration—Political aspects—Case studies.
6. Africa, Sub-Saharan—Politics and government—21st century. I. Title.
HV640.5.A3B48 2013
362.870967—dc23 2013000077
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Contents
Preface vii
Maps xiii
Introduction 1
1. Survival Migration 10
2. The National Politics of International Institutions 29
3. South Africa: The Ad Hoc Response to the
Zimbabwean Influx 54
4. Botswana: The Division of Zimbabweans into
Refugees and Migrants 78
5. Angola: The Expulsion of the Congolese 90
6. Tanzania: The Paradoxical Response to Congolese
from South Kivu 117
7. Kenya: Humanitarian Containment and the Somalis 135
8. Yemen: Contrasting Responses to Somalis and Ethiopians 160
9. Improving the Refugee Protection Regime 173
Conclusion: Implementation Matters 188
Notes 199
References 213
Index 227
Preface
This is a book that began as a digression and quickly became an obsession. In
early 2009, when I first traveled to southern Africa, I had originally planned com-
parative research on regional cooperation on migration in Africa. My intention
had been to undertake a few elite policy interviews in Pretoria and Gaborone
and then leave. But I got distracted by something more interesting and, frankly,
more important.
I arrived in the region just after the peak of the mass influx of Zimbabweans
from Robert Mugabe’s rapidly collapsing state. Without the means to survive
at home, hundreds of thousands of people were fleeing across the border into
neighboring states. And yet, what was most striking was that despite their situ-
ation back home—where they faced economic collapse, famine, drought, and
generalized violence—most were not recognized as refugees. They received al-
most no assistance from the government or international organizations and were
frequently rounded up, detained, and deported.
E ven though most arrived because they could not maintain the most basic
conditions of life in their own country, they fell outside the boundaries of an
international refugee framework, which generally defines a refugee as someone
fleeing targeted persecution. Most of the Zimbabweans were fleeing very seri-
ous human rights deprivations, but only a small number faced targeted persecu-
tion that met the threshold of the refugee definition established by states after
the Second World War. The UN refugee agency described the Zimbabweans as
in a “neither/nor” situation, not refugees but not voluntary economic migrants
either.
While I was in Johannesburg, I visited some of the main areas where Zimba-
bwean migrants were based. On one such visit, Elina Hankela, a Finnish volunteer
doing PhD research, took me and my colleague, Esra Kaytaz, to the overcrowded
Central Methodist Church in downtown Johannesburg, where some 3,400 Zim-
babweans had spent many months living and organizing their community, de-
spite constant attempts to evict them by the authorities.
A t the church, among the people I spoke to was Michelle, a bright and ar-
ticulate fifteen-year-old Zimbabwean girl who approached me and said, “A lot
of people come here and ask us questions, but nobody ever does anything, and
nothing changes. What are you going to do?” I explained that I was just a re-
vii
viii PREFACE
searcher and I would not be able to do very much. But I said that I would try to
write something.
F our years later, this book is the best response I have to her question. It is too
little and too late. It is, however, an attempt to make sense of what happened not
only to Zimbabweans in South Africa but also to the many millions of people
around the world who flee similarly serious human rights deprivations in failed
and fragile states and yet fall outside the international refugee framework created
in the aftermath of the Second World War.
Following my return from the region, it occurred to me that the situation
of Zimbabweans in southern Africa was not unique but was part of a broader
pattern. Across many African states—and others around the world—increasing
numbers of people are fleeing serious rights deprivations in fragile and failed
states rather than targeted persecution. Yet the international community has
struggled to conceptualize such populations. In response to this conceptual chal-
lenge, “survival migration” was born, the term reflecting the language used by
many of the people I interviewed. I spent the next two years researching survival
migration in a range of other contexts across sub-Saharan Africa. I explored the
situation of Zimbabweans in South Africa and Botswana, Congolese in Angola
and Tanzania, and Somalis in Kenya and Yemen. My case selection reflects the
variation in national and international responses across host states. Some offer
protection for survival migrants as if they were refugees, and others do not. This
inconsistency matters for its own sake, and it also poses an important puzzle
for our understanding of international institutions: How is it that host states
with the same or similar institutionalization of international norms relating to
refugees could have such radically different practices in response to cross-border
displacement?
In relation to each of the six cases, I therefore set out to explore three basic
questions: (1) Why have people been leaving these fragile and failed states?
(2) What national and international institutional responses have they encoun-
tered in the host country? and (3) What explains variation in these responses?
My purpose in posing these questions has been both practical and academic. On
one level, I have set out to highlight the situation of people fleeing serious rights
deprivations that fall outside the refugee regime. On another, I have set out to
explore a particular academic question: to understand how international insti-
tutions work in practice—when and why do international institutions adapt to
new circumstances at national and local levels and when and why do they not?
T his dual imperative, speaking simultaneously to policy and practice, on the
one hand, and to academic debates in political science and international rela-
tions, on the other hand, is often a fine balance. I hope I have done both goals
justice, not least because of the vast numbers of people who have assisted me in
PREFACE ix
my work along the way. This has been a very ambitious project in both theoreti-
cal and empirical scope. It has taken me outward from my disciplinary comfort
zone of international relations into comparative politics, political philosophy,
law, and African studies. In doing so, I have ventured far beyond my own areas of
expertise and research networks, and I am greatly indebted to the grace, goodwill,
and patience of the many people who have assisted me.
This book would not have been possible without fieldwork and interviews,
conducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, South Africa, Bo-
tswana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Geneva, Brussels, and New York, as well as through
numerous phone interviews and conversations. The work was possible only be-
cause of the logistical support of a number of international organizations and
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Above all, the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has put significant amounts of time and
resources into enabling me to conduct this research, revealing itself once again
to be extremely open to and supportive of the research community. Aside from
the many UNHCR staff who responded to my questions, I am especially grateful
for the support of Jeff Crisp, Ann Encontre, Geoffrey Carliez, Sanda Kimbimbi,
Kamini Karleker, and Eveline Wolfcarius for facilitating my research. Médecins
Sans Frontières–Belgium also provided significant support for my work, and I
am especially indebted to Liesbeth Shockeart, Katherine Derderian, and Aurelie
Ponthieu. Institutionally, I also received notable logistical assistance from the In-
ternational Organization for Migration, the International Committee of the Red
Cross, and a range of local NGOs including Ditshwanelo, Kituo Cha Shariya, and
Lawyers for Human Rights.
T he ideas in the book did not come prepackaged. Rather, they emerged as the
outcome of debate, deliberation, and constant refinement. Many people played
an important role. I am especially grateful to the participants in a September
2009 workshop in Oxford, who sat for a day and helped deconstruct and re-
build the concept of survival migration. My initial thoughts were subjected to
a thorough workout in numerous public lectures and seminars at universities
between 2009 and 2012, including Georgetown, Stanford, Oxford, University of
Texas at Austin, Southern Methodist University, Sussex, and the Université Libre
de Bruxelles. Different sections of the book were also presented at professional
associations, including the New Orleans and Montreal meetings of the Inter-
national Studies Association in 2010 and 2011 and the Kampala meeting of the
International Association for the Study of Forced Migration in 2011.
I was privileged to benefit from the feedback and insights of policy audiences
at the U.S. Department of State, the World Bank, the Canadian Department of
Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and the Commonwealth Secretariat.
All these presentations at universities, to governments, and at international or-
