Survival Migration

SURVIVAL MIGRATION SURVIVAL MIGRATION Failed Governance and the Crisis of Displacement Alexander Betts CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON Copyright © 2013 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. 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 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Paperback printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 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 comparative 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 situation 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. Even 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 serious human rights deprivations, but only a small number faced targeted persecution 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, despite constant attempts to evict them by the authorities. At 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. Four 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 institutions 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? This dual imperative, speaking simultaneously to policy and practice, on the one hand, and to academic debates in political science and international relations, 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 because 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. The 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.

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