Routes, motivations, and duration: explaining Eritrean forced migrants' journeys to Johannesburg
Date
2012-08-03
Authors
Araia, Tesfalem Teleab
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Abstract
This research report examines the migration experience of Eritrean forced migrants in Johannesburg. Since 1998, thousands of Eritreans have found their way into South Africa, with the existing trend indicating that this number is steadily increasing despite the fact that most of them use South Africa as a transit destination on their way to North America, Europe, and Australia. Even though they are spread out all over the country, there are many of them in Johannesburg. This research therefore focuses mainly on those refugees and asylum seekers living in Johannesburg. However, I expect the experiences of those who live in other parts of the host country to be the same as the ones who live in Johannesburg.
The report looks at the motivations, routes, and duration of the journeys of the migrants with the purpose to explain the role of migrant networks in shaping international migration. The source of information for this work is mainly the migrants themselves. Accordingly interviews were conducted through snowballing sampling. The number of Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers participated both in the formal as well as the informal interviews is 60. This first hand evidence gives much support to the platform of this research.
According to the findings, most of these migrants have traveled long distances to reach to South Africa. Their testimonies demonstrate that these journeys were influenced by the diasporic networks established along the routes identified in this case study. Similarly, the motivations of forced migrants are prone to the influence of these networks in many different ways as discussed in the report. Forced migrants are not, in most instances, attracted by any particular immigration policy of a host country. Rather this type of migration is now perpetuated, institutionalized and is directed by these networks.
Description
M.A. University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities (Forced Migration Studies), 2012