Introduction

Publication Type:

Book Chapter

Source:

Advancing {Refugee} {Protection} in {South} {Africa}, Berghahn Books, p.1–8 (2008)

ISBN:

9781845451097

Keywords:

Political Science / Human Rights, Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural, Social Science / Developing & Emerging Countries

Abstract:

Divided into three thematic parts to guide the reader, this important volume documents the development and implementation of refugee policy in South Africa over a 10-year period from 1996 until 2006. In doing so, it addresses issues of detention, gender, children and health as well as welfare policies for refugees. The contributions, all written by academics and practitioners of refugee protection, vividly illustrate the tangible shifts and concerns of a process that is not only aimed at establishing policies and legislation but also practices concerning refugees. Jeff Handmaker is a lecturer in law, human rights and development at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University in The Hague and honorary research fellow at the School of Law, University of the Witwatersrand. Lee Anne de la Hunt will spend two terms from October 2010 to March 2011 as a Visiting Fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford Department of International Development. Jonathan Klaaren is Professor of Law and, from August 2010, Acting Head of the School of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.   All three editors have been closely involved in refugee policy development and protection issues in South Africa and have published extensively on the subject.

Law and Personhood

The assembling of a new set of South African and global citizenships has taken on new urgency and a new plurality twenty years after the supposed advent of freedom. Categories make persons and persons make categories, as Jones and Dlamini have recently pointed out. In the South African constitutional text – where the phrase ‘categories of persons’ is written – race is but one of sixteen categories on the formal list. The Constitutional Court has added more.  Indeed, the effort of desegregating publics now takes place without the freshness of new symbols and with potentially stale institutions. In the public sphere, some responses to this era of citizenship reformation harken back to earlier times – either to times of forward-thinking, to times of social-making, or even to times of separating. Other responses rest in a consumptive present or appear as mere promised rhetorical bridges into the future. In this project WISER will examine the new questions that scholars in law, society and the humanities are posing themselves and others. What are the complex fashions in which bounded enclaves and social categories are fraying and unravelling or reforming? How, if at all, are persons remaking themselves as citizens? At the same time that these questions pose themselves, new fields of play are emerging with the changing audiences of the fashion shops and the sports terrains as well as the changing forms and formats of affluence and the new middle class. The very concept of a person as well as their categorical boundaries may shift with the movement of blood, organs, and self-awareness.

Add new comment

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.