{"id":25652,"date":"2026-07-09T15:21:32","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T15:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/codesria.org\/the-migrant-and-the-citizen-we-need-new-forms-of-political-community\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T15:23:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T15:23:26","slug":"the-migrant-and-the-citizen-we-need-new-forms-of-political-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/codesria.org\/fr\/the-migrant-and-the-citizen-we-need-new-forms-of-political-community\/","title":{"rendered":"The Migrant and the Citizen: We Need New Forms of Political Community"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bulletin en ligne du CODESRIA, No. 7, Juillet 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Suren Pillay,<\/strong> Centre for African Studies University of Cape Town South Africa<\/p>\n

\u00ab\u00a0When we turn on the foreign migrant, we are looking into a mirror. The migrant is not the source of our problems. Rather, the figure of the \u2018undocumented migrant\u2019 is both a deflection from and a reflection of them<\/em>.\u00a0\u00bb\u00a0 Suren Pillay 29 June 2026, 15:54<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The history of violence in the twentieth century is filled with moments when societies have fixated on an \u2018Other\u2019 as the source of their problems, especially economic hardship. In Europe, the Jew, the Romani and later the communist occupied that role; today it is often the Muslim. During apartheid, South Africa\u2019s Other was the \u2018swart gevaar\u2019 and the communist. In post-apartheid South Africa, it has increasingly become the migrant from elsewhere in Africa and the global South.<\/p>\n

In South Africa, the warning signs were visible in the xenophobic attacks of 2008. Today, the sentiment there is more organised, by charismatic leaders with growing public support. Official responses have often resembled those of 2008: political leaders deny that xenophobia exists; NGOs mobilise solidarity campaigns; and academics debate labels\u2014is it xenophobia, Afrophobia or class conflict? None of these responses is inherently wrong, but none is adequate to the politics now unfolding.<\/p>\n

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Bulletin en ligne du CODESRIA, No. 7, Juillet 2026 by Suren Pillay, Centre for African Studies University of Cape Town South Africa \u00ab\u00a0When we turn on the foreign migrant, we are looking into a mirror. The migrant is not the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25650,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[332,287,333],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bulletin-fr","category-news-fr","category-publications-fr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/codesria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/codesria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/codesria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codesria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codesria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25652"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/codesria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25654,"href":"https:\/\/codesria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25652\/revisions\/25654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codesria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/codesria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codesria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codesria.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}