Displacement, Dispossession, Population Movement, Migration, Immigration, and Asylum After Apartheid – 2025

Overview

Our program will begin during the Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 semester with informational and learning sessions to better understand South Africa’s history of colonial settlement, apartheid, political struggle, and liberation.

Students will dedicate the duration of the program to working at the community partner organizations listed below. These organizations seek to advocate for and improve the lives of displaced native South Africans, given the legacy of apartheid, as well as foreign-born Capetonians with immigrant and refugee status. Advocacy efforts include but are not limited to: housing and workers’rights, policy research and publication, advocacy for LGBTQIA+ identified persons who are unhoused and undocumented, asylum cases, etc. Focusing on creating a more just South Africa for marginalized, migrant, and immigrant people, community partners work to help rehouse, resettle, and integrate squatter, refugee, and immigrant families into the society. In the course of their placements, students will have the opportunity to meet with South Africans who were antiapartheid activists, union organizers, and legal advocates who fought the rigid system of apartheid. Confirmed guests will include: legal scholars who work with migrant and refugee communities and activists who advocate for displaced and unhoused squatters, foreign nationals, and asylees.

Apartheid, established in 1948, operated to strip South Africans of color of full rights of citizenship and subjected a majority to racial, gender, sexual, and class discrimination. Organized struggle on the part of individuals and organizations including the African National Congress, Black Consciousness Movement, South African Students’ Organization, etc. would eventually force the state’s hand. In 1994 South Africa held its first democratic elections extending the franchise to Black South Africans. DukeEngage South Africa Cape Town affords students an opportunity to better understand this history and the many efforts to reshape South African society after almost 350 years of settler colonialism.

Community Partnerships

Community partners will include organizations such as the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), Ndifuna Ukwazi (NU), the Refugee Rights Unit (University of Cape Town), Triangle Project, and the International Labour Research and Information Group (ILRIG). These organizations work towards “the cultural, social and economic integration of migrants, refugees and South Africans into local society. Perceiving migration as an opportunity,” they are committed to alleviating poverty and promoting development in the Western Cape while fostering integration between migrants, refugees and South Africans. Organizations offer “professional services to ensure the full realisation of constitutional and human rights to all South Africans” including those in the LGBTQIA+ community.

Displacement and dispossession, state neglect, and abandonment are global issues and South African ones. While the history of the US southern border reflects efforts to control the arrival of refugees and migrant workers from Central America, South Africa’s borders similarly reflect histories of efforts by refugees and migrants to cross into a country perceived to provide both economic opportunity and political stability. In working with our community partners, students will be afforded insight into the universal challenge of displaced peoples motivated by economic, political, and increasingly ecological need as well as domestic policies of exclusion.

Students interning with our partners will support asylum cases, advocacy campaigns, access to urban housing and land, and a host of other services provided to displaced nationals, asylum seekers, refugees, migrants, women, the poor, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Program Requirements

Skills: Internship placements with community partners require interns to record depositions, oral histories, and survey interviews; transcribe oral histories and survey interviews; some analysis of data sets; collaboration with research supervisors on the writing of articles, reports, and book chapters; participation in community partner events (conferences, workshops, organizing meetings). Good writing and communication skills are essential as are attention to detail in drafting and editing documents. Graphic design skills are not essential, but can be useful for advocacy campaigns.

Personal Qualities: Students should be interested in the lives of others and have general curiosity about geopolitics. Being open to new experiences and being accommodating of others are important and contribute to building a sense of community with other DukeEngage South Africa participants inclusive of the Site Coordinator and Program Director. Other critical qualities include radical empathy and maturity.

Logistics

Housing, meals, and transportation:

As in prior years, the program will arrange for accommodation in a guesthouse located in the City Bowl (Cape Town’s downtown). Students will be assigned roommates and will share a common bedroom and bathroom.

The guesthouse provides breakfast. Students will receive a stipend to purchase food for lunch and dinner. There will be access to a refrigerator, additional food storage, and cooking facilities. Most students have eaten their meals at modestly priced local restaurants or cafes, or have ordered takeout. Students share meals twice a week when there is a guest speaker and in order to reflect on their work and activities.

Most placements are within walking distance or accessible via secure public transport. Whenever feasible, accounting for questions of safety and proximity, students will use the MyCiTi Bus system, the University of Cape Town student bus (Jammie), and Ubers if and when necessary.

Local safety, security, and cultural norms: We encourage students who have questions or concerns about health or safety in international programs to check Duke’s International SOS (ISOS) portal for relevant information. If you have special needs related to health, culture, disability, or religious practices, please contact the program director(s) or the DukeEngage office to discuss whether your needs can be accommodated in this program.

For guidance on how race, religion, sexual/gender identity, ability, or other aspects of identity might impact your travels, we suggest exploring the Diversity, Identity and Global Travel section of the DukeEngage website.

Academic Connections

This program is open to all, and might especially appeal to students taking courses in ICS, Cultural Anthropology, History, Political Science, Pre-Law, and Public Policy to name just a few possible intersections between undergraduate education and the DukeEngage program.

Students who participate in this program might go on to pursue senior theses with a focus on South Africa, the history of apartheid, research projects concerned with international law and the rights of asylees, the history of antiapartheid struggles, as well as South African literature or an array of emerging debates about civil, constitutional, and human rights.