Human security implications of the securitisation of migration : a case study on South Africa’s BMA Act 2 of 2020

Abstract

As the Copenhagen School has shown, something becomes a security problem when political elites declare it to be so. Securitisation, therefore, legitimises extraordinary measures beyond the established political norms. Migration has been perceived as a potential threat to the security of states; consequently, it has been securitised. The literature, through various amendments and critiques, has questioned how well the Copenhagen School’s core concept of “societal security” has been understood and applied outside of Europe. South Africa, which is a democracy, has liberalised its immigration policies despite its racist traditions, but there have been various amendments to these policies over the years. The political discourses of these policies target foreigners as extraordinary threats to the collective identity of society. But this also happens because the government views their various national security issues because of poor border control and the inability to maintain overall political order, which is a clear example of securitisation. The argument for this study is that securitisation has human security implications for migration to and in South Africa; these implications will be exacerbated by the Border Management Authority Act 2 of 2020. This study aims to analyse the securitisation of migration in South Africa, from open “liberal” policies to more restrictive policies to justify maintaining political order, and therefore align these changes to South Africa’s new border management efforts and indicate their possible human security consequences. The human security perspective comprises both the conditions of treatment of immigrants and the impact of securitisation of migration on the resident population of the host country. The study was primarily qualitative and made use of discourse analysis to make sense of the analysed secondary data; this was exemplified through a case study. The study found that the new act is a realignment of restrictive immigration policy measures in South Africa that present insecurities to the livelihoods of migrants. Migrants are faced with discriminatory behaviour through the political discourse by political leaders, the media and the public, which is characterised by xenophobic denialism and minimalism. The dissertation concluded that South Africa needs to make changes to its national security agenda that would improve the approaches taken to deal with migration through border management. This can be done by using a facilitative security approach rather than an interdiction approach. In addition, political leaders must oppose institutionalised discriminatory behaviour in the political discourse on migration – this prevents bias and helps achieve political order, which is crucial to the development of South Africa