Encounters with 'race' : Eritrean refugees and asylum-seekers' self-identification practices in relation to the experience of racialisation in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Little is known about the everyday racialisation experiences and self-identification practices of foreign-born non-South African communities in South Africa such as refugees, asylumseekers and immigrants. To explore this everyday phenomenon, I employed an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach and interviewed 46 Eritrean refugees and asylumseekers living in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. This study is embedded in the field of race, ethnicity and immigration studies. Racialisation theory, racial and ethnic identity theories, and immigrant adaptation theories were employed to interpret the findings. Results indicate that most participants largely resisted and challenged their racialisation by both bureaucratic forms and local South Africans in their everyday social interactions. Participants were racially perceived and classified by ordinary South Africans, as coloured, indian, alternately as coloured and indian, black, and as racially ambiguous. Some viewed racial identities as meaningless categories. Others self-identified ethnically in a contextually contingent and dynamic ways as Eritreans, Habesha and Tigrinya. Still others racially selfidentified as black, and as coloured. Through their complex and novel practices of racial selfidentification patterns, the participants re-defined traditional racial self-identification practises in South Africa. For some, skin colour and phenotype did not inform their racial self-identification and the majority inconsistently moved between racial categories depending on the social context and in complex ways. The participants‘ experiences suggest that traditional South African racial categories are encountering resistance and re-definition by foreign-born refugee and asylum-seeker communities; furthermore, such communities are introducing new ways of racial self-identification practices in everyday life in post-Apartheid South Africa.