Reconsidering displacement in southern Africa

Abstract

In the light of developments in the southern African region over the last number of years, the paper argues for a reconsideration, and an extension, of the way in which the concept of ‘displacement’ has conventionally been understood. It considers a range of different kinds of population movement, arguing that they are essentially interrelated, and that the more conventional distinction between voluntary and involuntary migration is becoming increasingly tenuous. In this regard, the paper shows how, in a number of different kinds of situations, people become ‘disemplaced’, ie for a range of socio-economic reasons, the ability of the area where people live, or with which they associate, to support or to sustain them progressively erodes under them. They are thus no longer able to remain socially or economically emplaced, and increasingly become unsettled, uprooted, ‘disemplaced’, having to keep moving around in order to survive. Such disemplacement gives rise to a situation where many people become permanently uprooted and thus, displaced—without having been forcibly moved in the first place. This two-stage process of disemplacement giving rise to displacement—which did not start out as displacement—has implications both for how we conceptualise much of the displacement occurring in southern Africa, as well as for how we approach and deal with it in the policy arena.