Research Brief 3: Strengthening Strategic Engagement and Movement Building for Migrant Rights in South & Southern Africa

Despite Constitutional guarantees of equality and rights, the legacies of apartheid – such as unequal access to housing, education, and health care – have not been adequately redressed in South Africa (SA). Instead, decades of mismanagement, corruption, and anti-poor governance1 have led to a worsening socio-economic crisis marked by high youth unemployment, violent crime, and collapsing public services. These failures have fuelled polarisation, with groups like Operation Dudula and March and March channelling public frustration
into anti-migrant sentiment.2 At the same time, the South African government is advancing policies and legal amendments that curtail protections for asylum-seekers and other migrants while casting them as threats to social order rather than rights-holders.

This Research Brief builds on earlier analyses (Briefs I and II) of SA’s migrant rights sector to examine the country’s shifting socio-political landscape in 2025. It highlights how documentation, health care, and education function as key battlegrounds where Constitutional promises are contested. Drawing on findings from the Deliberation Workshop 1 (January 2025), the Porticus “MOVE” Convening (April 2025), follow-up interviews and a desktop review, this Briefsituates current struggles for migrant rights within broader histories of resistance against racialised oppression. It concludes with two case studies – the Sans Papiers movement in France and the United Democratic Front (UDF) under apartheid – to highlight lessons for contemporary movement-building.

Read Research Brief 3 here.