Negotiating the present, facing the past : postcolonial politics and transnational youth experiences in South Africa

Abstract

Migration reshapes South Africa’s religious and political landscape, yet the experiences of African youth who traverse the continent remain under-examined. Drawing on biographical interviews and participant observation with Nigerian and Zimbabwean migrants in Johannesburg (2024–25), this article explores how young people negotiate xenophobia, post-apartheid inequality and the unfinished business of decolonization through religious and spiritual practices. We show how schools, clinics and urban neighborhoods function as key sites where colonial and apartheid racial hierarchies are reproduced, and where migrants are marked as criminal, excessive or disposable. At the same time, faith-based organizations and everyday spiritual repertoires provide infrastructures of mobility, belonging and political critique, enabling youth to reframe marginalization in Pan-African and theological terms. By bringing postcolonial and Pan-African debates into conversation with lived religion, the article demonstrates how transnational African youth convert traumatic encounters with exclusion into fragile yet meaningful forms of agency and hope in Johannesburg today.