Mobility, Vulnerability, and Disrupted Care: A Decolonial Analysis of Zimbabwean Transnational Families in South Africa

Abstract

This paper qualitatively examines the intersectional precarity experienced by Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa and its severe impact on transnational care economies, family separation, and cross-border kinship bonds. This study uses a decolonial lens and empirical data on Zimbabweans’ lived experiences. The findings reveal that intra-national migrations (migrations between neighbouring countries within the same region) are fierce, triggering overlapping national identities, competition for economic resources, and blacks hating each other, which directly weakens the relational safety nets of stretched households. Further, the findings demonstrate how colonial entanglements across generations rupture kinship ties by conceptualising these disruptions to care through an intergenerational and trauma-informed lens. Thus, resolution of these vulnerabilities necessitates transnational, trauma-informed social work and care interventions that are scientifically grounded, along with structural policy reforms. The paper concludes that intra-national migration to South Africa represents a unique form of African internal migration, linking apartheid labour systems, xenophobia, and dependence on religion and spiritual networks for survival rather than governmental structures. To address how structural violence disrupts transnational caregiving, this study recommends policy reforms framed around decolonial and intersectional approaches to dealing with migration justice, family reunification, and social protection for vulnerable dependents in post-apartheid South Africa.

1. Introduction

South Africa still struggles with the complexity of intra-African movement in the post-apartheid age. South Africa is a destination for many Black people escaping political instability, economic collapse, and social upheaval throughout the continent. One of the reasons for this is that the nation’s strategic geographic position, comparatively mature economy, and heritage of labour mobility have long made it appealing (Crush and Tevera 2010). Zimbabweans are one of the largest immigrant groups in South Africa. An estimated 3 million Zimbabweans were living in South Africa by 2020, many without legal papers (IOM 2020). An addition was recorded by the 2022 South African census, increasing the immigrant population (Schewel and Debray 2023). The statistics could be higher because of poor record-keeping, permeable borders, and changing migration patterns. Crucially, these migrants maintain deep financial and emotional ties with their origin communities, forming ‘stretched households’ that rely on continuous cross-border remittances.

Driven mostly by the extended socio-economic crises in their own country, Zimbabweans are one of the biggest and most obvious groups among these migrants (Crush et al. 2015). Early in the 2000s, Zimbabwe’s economic collapse under President Robert Mugabe’s government, characterised by hyperinflation, land reforms, and political repression, precipitated a widespread migration (Anderson 2017). Mass migration to South Africa began with Zimbabwe’s 2005 Operation Murambatsvina (Drive Out Trash), which forced 700,000 urban poor people to migrate. Following the 2017 military takeover, this migration was more intense as political persecution and unstable currencies undermined livelihoods (Anderson 2017).

South Africa’s colonial apartheid past is overpoweringly entwined with the history of migration. During apartheid, migrants were hired to work in mines and farms (Crush and Tevera 2010). While solidifying racial inequalities that favoured white South Africans, this system produced a temporary underclass of migrant labourers denied citizenship and fundamental rights and systematically separated from their rural families. Racialised relations in post-apartheid South Africa are not a simple linear continuation of apartheid. Rather, racialised exclusions change and reinvent themselves under contemporary democratic government. Apartheid-era ‘migrants’ were institutionalised through formal state labour contracts on mines and farms, whereas today’s intra-African ‘migrants’ negotiate informalised labour markets, administrative illegality, and criminalised mobility. Though it sought to reinterpret its migration policy in a democratic context, post-apartheid South Africa inherited these inequalities. Although the end of apartheid rules in 1994 brought hope, the government’s attitude on migration was conflicted. For instance, regardless of the 1996 Constitution, which guaranteed rights for all citizens, the later 2002 Immigration Act emphasised the criminalisation of illegal migration (Republic of South Africa 2002).

Although South Africa’s economy depends on their labour in industries like agriculture, construction, and domestic work, their existence is regularly demonised in public debate. Migrants are blamed for unemployment, crime, and resource constraints; this conflict between constitutional values and exclusionary policies has maintained a hostile environment towards African immigrants (Matsinhe 2011). Most of this antagonism has gone towards immigrants from Zimbabwe. Media representations of Zimbabweans sometimes paint them as job stealers or criminals, hence feeding xenophobic emotions that burst into violent attacks in 2008, 2015, and 2019 (Tarisayi and Manik 2020). These outbreaks, which claimed hundreds of lives and caused widespread displacement, showcase the frailty of social cohesiveness in a country still recuperating from the scars of apartheid (Matsinhe 2011). The term xenophobia is used deliberately in conjunction with structural racism to articulate how foreignness is managed, spatialised, and targeted in state operations. Intra-Black xenophobia is a racialised kind of exclusion peculiar to post-apartheid institutions, a continuation of colonial divide-and-rule taxonomies and internalised oppression (Fanon 1963).

Given this backdrop, this study’s fundamental argument is that post-apartheid South Africa reproduces intra-Black, cross-national, and gendered exclusions that co-exist alongside historical racial hierarchies. While intra-African xenophobia is not the same in magnitude and character as apartheid-era White-on-Black racism, it is a current mutation of colonial divide-and-rule taxonomies (makwerekwere) and internalised oppression. This research contributes to the literature by showing how administrative precarity and everyday microaggressions actively unravel informal transnational care economies, turning border enforcement into intergenerational family disintegration. The structure of the paper starts with a review of the literature, followed by the theoretical framework. The findings and discussions are presented simultaneously, followed by recommendations. Last is the conclusion of the paper.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Legal Exclusion and Bureaucratic Violence Against Families

There is a growing body of literature bordering on migration and xenophobia and economic marginalisation in South Africa. The existing scholarship in this field primarily sets the stage for how post-apartheid border regimes and historic patterns of labour mobility contribute to migrant economic marginalisation, positioning non-nationals as structural economic underclasses of urban centres. Although current studies offer a basic understanding of these factors, they overlook the overlapping identities, pandemics, disabilities, and Blackness which are sources of vulnerability. Building on these factors, this study focuses on this gap. By concentrating on the lived experiences of Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa, this study brings novel insights about intra-national migrations, xenophobia, pandemics, and hating blackness. This paper argues that these interconnected prisms facilitate what is described by Tize (2020) as encouraging permanent temporariness in migration. South Africa’s exclusive immigration laws drive migrants into illegality via systematic delays in permit processing. This delay is bureaucratic violence created to hurt immigrants (Abioye and D’ORsi 2025). Importantly, this type of administrative violence attacks the very heart of family stability, as migrants are regularly denied the opportunity to open bank accounts, secure formal housing, or return home to visit elderly dependents and children. This study notes a key limitation brought by focusing on policy analysis, which is obscuring human experiences. The existing literature has effectively tabled systemic inefficiencies; however, it leaves a significant gap in addressing the lived consequences of bureaucratic violence on transnational care arrangements. The challenge of these studies is that they concentrate more on policies than on the lived experiences of migrants; this undermines the cost of legal exclusion. By centring on the lived experiences of migrants, this study addresses this oversight and illuminates the tangible impact of legal precarity.

2.2. The Intersectional Care Drain: Gender, Disability and Age

It has been noted how dehumanised Zimbabwean migrants are as criminals in media discourses (Crush and Tevera 2010). In particular, this body of research reveals how mainstream media stories frame nonnationals as threats to security, “job stealers,” and burdens on public infrastructure, in the process legitimising societal hostility and state-sanctioned policing. But these studies sometimes see xenophobia as a monolithic phenomenon, ignoring how multiple identities, such as race, gender, disability, and legal status, intersect to generate special vulnerabilities. Accordingly, this represents a critical theoretical gap, since the intersectional nature of intra-national migrant precarity is less explored. Gendered hazards are noted, but the existing literature does not speculate on how disability or illegal status increases exclusion. Moreover, the gendered exploitation of migrant women leads to a ‘care drain’ in Zimbabwe, forcing older grandmothers into primary caregiving roles without adequate financial support. In thinking through these overlapping processes, the study re-anchors Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1989/2006) intersectionality paradigm in its original legal and structural underpinnings to highlight the ways in which immigration law and healthcare management produce compound precarity. Furthermore, Pillay (2021) notes that colonial rule in South Africa was based on enforced difference and spatial segregation, rather than colonial assimilation. Such historic logics of enforced difference are adapted by post-apartheid border regimes to marginalise non-nationals. Thus, while it is good that the gendered exploitation is researched and documented, the interplay of the vulnerabilities emanating from the intersection of gender, disability and undocumented migrant status is absent in research. This paper fills in this void by using Crenshaw’s (2006) intersectionality and argues that migrant Zimbabwean women with disabilities are likely to be affected more by xenophobic attacks and healthcare denials.

It is well documented how the unofficial economy contributes to the marginalisation of migrants. According to Schraten (2013), South African police extort informal traders. Studies by Amit (2010) show how illegal labourers are viewed and assigned 3D labels (dirty, dangerous, degrading). Nonetheless, the geographical scope is not broad enough. Most studies are done on urban cities like Johannesburg and exclude the rural and peri-urban areas where migrants experience other difficulties. The challenge of focusing on urban areas is that it limits the generalisability of the findings, missing some unique challenges, which include diverse forms of policing, community dynamics and access to resources which are likely to be faced by immigrants living in remote rural areas. This study broadens this discourse by bringing in other populations from neighbouring borders between South Africa and Zimbabwe. The inclusion of broader and more diverse geographical areas, including neighbouring nations or regional borders. As such, this study focuses on this notable methodological gap and aims to provide nuanced spatial analysis of migrant marginalisation.

Also, the issue of gendered harassment focusing on migrant women is topical, particularly the issue of gendered exploitation. The existing literature underlines how queer Zimbabwean migrants experience triple marginalisation, xenophobia, homophobia, and exclusion from HIV/AIDS programmes. This contribution is significant to this study, as they reveal a pattern of scholarship that categorises identity-based vulnerabilities at the expense of examining their convergence. People with disabilities are absent in the Zimbabwean-to-South-African migration stories. This absence shows a critical gap in empirical data and theoretical engagement with disability within the discipline of migration studies. Meekosha (2011) suggests decolonising disability studies, and this study fills this gap by arguing for centring migrant voices with disabilities, women, and other vulnerable populations. Moreover, the lived experiences of elderly migrants remain underexplored. These populations are often disregarded in legislation and policy; elderly migrants struggle with ageism in the workplace and denial of elderly care, severing their capacity to act as vital pillars of family history and transnational guidance. Thus, although this study prioritises disability, it seeks to empirically address broader and multiple marginalised groups, starting with the Zimbabwean migrant communities in South Africa.

The literature about faith-based organisations and migration is growing. According to Dube (2019), religion and spirituality play a critical role in assisting immigrants. Religion and spirituality depoliticise the pain of migration instead of seeking systemic justice. Migrants are viewed in ways that contravene their faith tradition (Kerwin 2024). It is evident that the existing literature presents faith-based organisations as sites offering both care and complicity. Although the existing literature highlights this, it has not sufficiently examined the complex and inevitably contradictory positioning of churches led by immigrants. Hence, this study acknowledges that there is a conflict towards how immigrant-led churches negotiate supporting immigrants and balancing internal power dynamics or state persecution. Close analysis highlights that there is the state’s mistrust of migrant churches and religions. This incident can be viewed as underscoring a significant research gap about the relationship between the state and migrant churches, which this study will explore.

2.3. Pandemic Crises and Disrupted Transnational Care Economies

The impact of the pandemic and migration still needs further investigation, particularly how COVID-19 heightened xenophobic violence in South Africa. Emerging research ties the disproportionate impact of the epidemic on migrants to colonial triage systems that consider certain lives unworthy (Chekenya 2024). But the conceptual weakness is that the pandemic is thought of as an isolated and extraordinary event. The danger of this approach is that it obscures how pandemics magnify existing structural inequities. The epidemic is not an aberration; it is a crisis of continuity. Before 2020, cross-border family remittances and care economies had been frequently disrupted by large socio-economic shocks (hyperinflation in the early 2000s, Operation Murambatsvina in 2005, which relocated 700,000 urban inhabitants, and violent xenophobic outbursts in 2008, 2015 and 2019). These systemic vulnerabilities always existed, and COVID-19 magnified them. The lockdowns and restrictions broke transnational networks and increased gendered care responsibilities. This study directly focuses on this gap, examining how the pandemic disrupts transnational care economies and increases emotional and relational stress for families. This paper demonstrates how border closures transformed economic hardship into extreme family separation and hunger among children in dependence in Harare by understanding crisis as a matter of continuity, not exception.

Using empirical lived experiences of Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa, this study positions COVID-19 not as an isolated disaster but rather as a symptom of coloniality, highlighting migrants’ resilience via unofficial businesses or religious networks and repressive institutions. In doing so, this study addresses an important gap by theoretically reframing the pandemic using a decolonial lens to understand and argue that crisis is continuity rather than an exception.

3. Theoretical Framework: Decolonial Theory and Intersectional Care

Decolonial Theory is the main overarching explanatory framework employed in this study. Decolonial philosophy is concerned with undoing the legacy of colonialism and speaking to indigenous human relations and systems of knowledge. Within this broader framework, Intersectionality (Crenshaw 2006) and Structural Violence (Galtung 1969) are supporting sub-frameworks that explain how differentiated vulnerabilities (gender, disability, administrative status) function within the coloniality of power, guiding our inductive thematic analysis directly. Eurocentric perspectives and standards marginalise local and racialised populations (Quijano 2000). Quijano’s 2000 use of coloniality of power as a lens to understand xenophobia as an apartheid legacy or migrant resistance as epistemic disobedience. Decolonial theory helps this study to understand how post-apartheid South Africa is dealing with immigration matters which are not Eurocentric. Nyamnjoh’s (2016) concept of incompleteness, a rejection of strict colonial binaries, speaks to participants’ mixed identities as borderlanders between Zimbabwe and South Africa who navigate fluid transnational family commitments across borders. Although Quijano’s (2000) coloniality of power provides a helpful framework for analysing racialised labour hierarchies, its application to Southern Africa necessitates a clear historical context. African decolonial historians note that apartheid segregation and enforced difference, rather than assimilation, were the main mechanisms of colonial authority in Southern Africa. This study uses Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013) and Mbembe (2019) to analyse how post-colonial state borders generate coloniality and internalised violence to ground this decolonial framework locally. The paper also presents Ubuntu as an endogenous philosophy to examine transnational kinship and caregiving resistance, with its relational understandings of personhood (umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu), communal commitment, and mutual care.

The neoliberal stories of migration, which present migrants as agents of development, hide systemic exploitations (Castles 2010); however, the coloniality of power reveals how firmly ingrained racial inequalities from apartheid still affect social dynamics in South Africa. Black South Africans were methodically degraded and exploited as labour under apartheid; non-South Black Africans were further excluded as outsiders; post-1994, these hierarchies changed into xenophobic violence, where Black South Africans, themselves victims of colonial oppression, continue to exclude African immigrants. This phenomenon mirrors Fanon’s (1963) study of internalised colonialism, in which the oppressed copy imperial brutality to recover agency.

Xenophobic language characterising immigrants as job stealers or criminals reflects colonial strategies of divide-and-rule, which split societies to underwrite authority. An insult for African immigrants, the racialised term makwerekwere shows how colonial taxonomies continue to marginalise immigrants to subhuman status. This labelling and name-shaming violence is systemic and communal, sustained by economic policies. Informal alternative economies are used as an epistemic disobedience (Mignolo 2011). Colonisation dehumanises racialised groups, making them invisible to systems of power reflecting colonial regimes that consider some life expendable (Maldonado-Torres 2007). These invisibilities include intentional exclusions from public health care during crises like COVID-19, for instance, which reflect colonial-era triage that allowed underprivileged communities to die. Applied to the domestic sphere, coloniality operates by privileging the exploitation of African families for cheap labour over their cohesion. Decolonising migration involves reinstating the sanctity of transnational kinship ties, validating community-led care economies, and dismantling border regimes that enforce family separation. This echoes Quijano’s (2000) claim that coloniality changes to fit modernity, hence extending exclusion via modern policies. Decolonial theory calls for transforming justice by reversing colonial bureaucracy; migration means substituting paths to citizenship for discriminatory immigration laws, therefore honouring migrants’ contributions to economies. Zimbabwean immigrants’ fight is not separate but entwined with worldwide movements aiming at decolonising authority and recovering humanity. Therefore, combining intersectionality with decolonial theory helps one to see how immigrants from Zimbabwe negotiate complex oppressions anchored in historical hierarchies.

To understand the relational effects of this coloniality (Quijano 2000), it is necessary to use a genealogical and intergenerational kinship approach. In an analytical sense, the genealogical and intergenerational kinship approach is conceptualised here as a framework to trace how historical patterns of colonial and apartheid labour extraction continue to structure current family separation across generations. Instead of treating current care arrangements as isolated contemporary phenomena, this approach explicitly links past labour reserve policies that separated male labourers from rural households to contemporary stretched households in which undocumented South African parents depend on grandmothers in Zimbabwe to raise children in an era of intergenerational precarity. Historically, colonial labour extraction fragmented Black families via enforced migrant labour systems (Crush and Tevera 2010). Border enforcement and bureaucratic violence perpetuate these genealogical ruptures in post-apartheid South Africa (Abioye and D’ORsi 2025; Tize 2020). Adult parents in South Africa living in precarious conditions and elderly grandmothers in Zimbabwe serving as primary carers for children represent an intergenerational continuum of care and trauma (Madhavan and Landau 2011) for stretched households. Transnational care is also a historical and relational endeavour to sustain family lineage, cultural memory, and emotional attachment across borders despite state-sanctioned hostility and not simply an economic transaction of remittances (Crush and Tevera 2010), as a genealogical analysis reveals.

4. Findings and Discussion

The findings of lived experiences of Zimbabweans in South Africa are simultaneously discussed using emerging themes: xenophobic violence and everyday racism; legal barriers and economic exploitation; COVID-19 and crisis on precarity; religious institutions as ambiguous sanctuaries on hostile ground; and resilience and resistance in community networks.

4.1. Disrupted Transnational Care Economies and Relational Strain

Xenophobia manifests itself in overt physical violence. However, the most insidious secondary effect is the destruction of transnational care economies that support families across borders. One male participant related a horrific event that happened in Alexandra Township: “I saw three young South Africans stab Sithole, a fellow Zimbabwean, shouting, ‘You foreigners steal our jobs!’ I couldn’t sleep for weeks—every sound made me panic.” This statement shows the material consequences of xenophobic matters and how there is a translation of economic scapegoating into physical harm and abuse. Matsinhe (2011) contends that the xenophobia of post-apartheid South Africa stems from economic concerns, whereby immigrants are blamed for shortcomings of government. The use of vocabulary such as “murders” and “stealing jobs” reflects official and media narratives that portray migrants as economic risks, therefore justifying violence by means of systematic othering (Hiropoulos 2019). These findings therefore confirm that xenophobia is not simply an attitudinal issue but embedded in structural mechanisms that use blame and deflect attention from the visible failures of the state.

Still, xenophobia permeated even daily contacts. One female participant detailed linguistic marginalisation on public transport: “People mock my accent when I speak Shona in the taxi.” Once, a guy cried, “Learn Zulu or go back to Zimbabwe!” Such microaggressions reflect Essed’s (1991) idea of everyday racism, in which institutional prejudices contaminate ordinary interactions. Such daily hostility impedes the mobility of female migrants who are primarily responsible for sending remittances back to the children in Zimbabwe and reduces their capacity to generate a steady income to sustain their households. Here, the participant’s identification as a woman from Zimbabwe adds to her vulnerability, therefore highlighting Crenshaw’s (2006) intersectionality. Her experience is about the junction of race and nationality, enhanced by gender, not about either one alone. Racialised exclusion and gendered harassment are two forms of dual exploitation immigrant women experience (Zinatsa and Saurombe 2022). This multi-layered marginalisation accentuates how xenophobia functions intersectionally, making Blacks more susceptible to elusive and obvious forms of exclusion.

Exclusion took even more terrible forms for immigrants with disabilities. One of the participants with a chronic condition offered, “Clinics refused to treat me”. Nurses say, “Foreigners drain our resources.” “I resorted to traditional healers, but my health becomes worse.” This denial of healthcare not only puts the individual’s survival at risk but also their ability to meet domestic caregiving responsibilities and the transfer of emotional and financial burdens to their home families in Zimbabwe. This narrative highlights the cascading effects of institutional xenophobia, where the exclusion of individuals from healthcare facilities makes them move towards informal services and insufficient alternatives. This story highlights how disability interacts with xenophobia to make people ‘invisible’ in policy frameworks (Meekosha 2011). Structural violence here denies individuals already excluded by nationality and ability essential liberties, including healthcare, dignity, and safety. Thus, for migrants with disabilities, the violence is compounded; they do not only face exclusions but also systemic ableism, which is doubly discounted in migration and disability policies.

4.2. Bureaucratic Violence as a Disrupter of Family Security

The labour market of South Africa depends on the exploitation of illegal immigrants, a fact ingrained in the stories of the participants. One self-employed Uber driver detailed systematic extortion: “Police stop me daily, demanding R500 bribes. They say, ‘You Zimbabweans are here illegally,’ even though I have a permit. Last month, I paid R3500 just to work.” This narrative highlights the extent to which legal precarity is weaponised by the state leaders for their political gains, subtly transforming regulatory frameworks and policies into instruments of predation. The R3500 extorted by police officers is money directly stolen from the participant’s family remittance allocation, leaving dependents in Zimbabwe without food or school fees. Further, the account shows bureaucratic violence, that is, state agents taking bribes by using legal ambiguity. The phrase “just to work” emphasises the acceptance of systematic corruption and a focus on livelihood. Migrant entrepreneurship in unofficial industries is common (Nyakabawu 2022). Many find that the promise of economic opportunity in South Africa clashes with the terrible reality of exploitation. These findings extend the concept of bureaucratic violence, which happens beyond institutional delay, to include its monetisation by the actors and frontline government officials.

Legal restrictions strengthened precarity even further. One participant, having lived in South Africa for fourteen years, complained, “Home Affairs has rejected my asylum application five times. Without papers, I can’t rent a room or open a bank account. I sleep in a garage and save cash in a mattress.” This statement agonisingly captures the lived experiences and reality of permanent temporariness, a condition that is described as a sustained instability despite being a long-term resident. Designed to exclude rather than integrate, which is a criticism of South Africa’s ‘permanently temporary’ immigration policy, is reflected in the participant sleeping in a garage and saving on a mattress. Delays in records deny access to banking, healthcare, and homes, therefore extending poverty cycles. The expression “sleep in a garage” captures the tangible results of bureaucratic neglect, a far cry from South Africa’s concept of a land of opportunity. This participant presents an experience which illustrates how immigration bureaucracy actively produces informal and economic exclusion, thereby effectively criminalising the everyday life of immigrants. Living in a garage, keeping cash under the mattress, is symbolic of the deep spatial and administrative violence that prevents migrants from having secure and dignified homes where family reunification can happen.

Women experienced gender-based economic exclusion. One of the participants, with university education, related: “Employers say, ‘We don’t hire foreigners for office jobs.’ I have an accounting degree, but I sell tomatoes at the market. My coworkers call me ‘the vendor from Zim.” This experience can be interpreted as de-skilling qualified migrants using xenophobic tactics. This further intersects with the gendered labour markets which reinforce economic subordination. Her experience reflects Amit’s 2010 study on the acronym ‘3D jobs’ (dirty, dangerous, and demeaning), where immigrants are pushed into low-status employment despite credentials. The racialised ridicule “vendor from Zim” showcases how economic exploitation intertwines with identity-based humiliation, hence supporting intersectional marginalisation. Zimbabwean migrants experience daily systemic exclusions. According to Amit (2010), undocumented migrants cannot easily access education and health systems. Women face more diverse and complex challenges, including sexual harassment. While often rejected by clinics and denied social assistance, disabled immigrants negotiate overlapping obstacles of xenophobia and ableism (Meekosha 2011). These realities mirror what sociologist Johan Galtung described as ‘structural violence’, harm done not by direct acts but rather by unfair policies excluding underprivileged populations from resources and dignity (Galtung 1969). Put together, these lived experiences demonstrate a hierarchy of exploitation, where legal status and ability are what determine one’s position within a stratified informal economy.

Participants often claimed to have great difficulty obtaining and renewing passports and other necessary documentation from Zimbabwean officials. Common administrative delays, inefficiency, and corruption in embassy procedures were accompanied by many migrants depending on middlemen or brokers to arrange appointments or expedite paperwork. Some claimed covert markets at border crossings where illegal money or counterfeit stamps were used to enable cross-border travel. These difficulties affected not just daily living but also increased vulnerability to legal precarity and abuse. These findings present the transnational dimension of bureaucratic violence, where one can note that inefficiencies and corruption in the sending nations increase precarity in the receiving nations. Inevitably, this traps migrants in a cross-border cycle of informality.

4.3. COVID-19 Crisis Intersectional Vulnerabilities, and Family Separation

The epidemic highlighted already existing weaknesses and the frailty of immigrant livelihoods, while severely disrupting cross-border family nets. One woman who lost her makeshift food stand amid lockdowns said: “Police confiscated my goods, shouting, ‘Foreigners are spreading the virus!’ I had no savings. My children in Zimbabwe starved for weeks.” This narration is significant, showing how a public health crisis becomes the ground for appraising xenophobic exclusion, with the thrust of enforcing mechanisms that target the livelihoods of migrants. This story fits the 70% of African immigrants in South Africa who lost income during lockdowns, according to the 2020 International Organisation for Migration study. My children in Zimbabwe starved for weeks. Her transnational fight, hungry children in Zimbabwe, reflects Madhavan and Landau’s (2011) idea of stretched households, in which migration splits families over borders and leaves them dependent on remittances cut off by crisis.

The pandemic affected the lifeline of transnational care, turning the economic shock into a humanitarian matter and a crisis for dependent families. Ranked among the tightest in the world, South Africa’s COVID-19 lockdowns locked informal marketplaces overnight, depriving illegal Zimbabweans of income or access to state assistance programmes such as the social assistance of the Distress Grant (Tawodzera and Crush 2024). One participant, a 58-year-old grandmother, described her anguish: ‘My daughters in Harare starved while I sold masks on the street. The R350 grant [for South Africans]? They said, “No papers, no help.”’ Her story underscores the gendered and generational care burdens that are placed on older women who must walk through hostile streets to keep multi-generational families alive. Also, her story mirrors Tawodzera and Crush (2024) data showing 15% of Zimbabweans lost income during lockdowns, compared with 64% of South Africans. These statistics show the differential impact of the pandemic, as evidenced by these statements, laying bare the citizenship-based hierarchy of vulnerability which is institutionalised in crisis response.

The COVID-19 epidemic highlighted already existing disparities. Among the worst lockdowns worldwide, South Africa’s ones disproportionately affected immigrants employed in unofficial businesses. Many lost livelihoods overnight and were reduced to poverty due to COVID-19 restrictions, including border closures, fractured families, and people failing to send money to families (Madhavan and Landau 2011). Concurrently, the pandemic increased xenophobic threats against immigrants, and they were also blamed for HIV transmission (Vanyoro 2019). Although this scapegoating reflected a worldwide trend, it had special resonance in a setting where historical grudges and economic hopelessness drive community tensions (Matsinhe 2011). To a greater extent, the pandemic acted as a revealing crisis, with the ability to expose and intensify the faults of the colonial era of ethnicity, nationality and belonging. Furthermore, while Crush and Tevera (2010) investigate remittance economies, few look at how gender roles in transnational homes, that is, women left behind in Zimbabwe, increase precarity. COVID-19 altered gendered care economies, as noted by Hiralal and Jinnah’s (2018) work on pandemic-induced family separation. The findings of this study assert that crisis-driven border closures unduly burdened women, both as immigrants exploring overwhelmed informal sectors and carers in Zimbabwe handling collapsed remittances.

Economic despair drove some into survival economies. One participant related: “I unlawfully sold airtime coupons after losing my job. I was arrested by police, but a church covered my bail.” This route from unemployment to informal survival work to criminalisation demonstrates how national neglect aggressively channels migrants into illegality. This experience is what Bourgois (2003) describes as survival economies. Inevitably, the absence of a proper government approach causes immigrants to find ways to survive. The faith-based interventions in this regard highlight the fragmented safety net for immigrants, whereby the faith organisation steps into voids that are sustained and created by the nation’s exclusion, without dealing with and addressing structural drivers.

One pain that surfaced often was family separation. Separated from his wife in Harare, a father complained: “We debate every call. You abandoned us, she says, but how can I give money when I make R100 a day?” This story captures circular disillusionment, in which migration promises wealth but causes emotional and relational upheaval. The challenge is that the pandemic increased this disillusionment, making the dream of migration a source of family conflict and moral fractures. Gendered economic precarity was reported by participants. Males easily found jobs in construction, agriculture, and informal trading, while for women, this job heightened insecurity. Female immigrants and their dependents suffer food insecurity and basic livelihood issues, especially during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Mutambara et al. 2021). These gendered approaches to pandemic precarity show how crises redistribute and fan vulnerability, strengthening existing inequalities within the families and communities of migrants.

4.4. Religious Institutions as Transnational Sanctuaries and Ambiguous Refuge

Churches first became important but erratic providers of help. One person whose house burnt down commended her church: “The church sent me R1000, clothing, and food.” This fits Dube’s (2019) view of churches as spaces of care, providing both material and spiritual comfort under trying circumstances. In the absence of state protection or biological relatives in the vicinity, faith communities function as substitute families that help to insulate migrants from acute trauma. Further, “They prayed with me and said, ‘God sees your pain.” This statement shows how the church provides both hope and encouragement for resilience amidst injustices. This spiritual framing, however, has a propensity to individualise structural suffering and offer solace without challenging vices and conditions that incubate or produce it. This is supported by another participant who argues that “The church feeds us but doesn’t challenge the government.” This position suggests that religious institutions depoliticise the suffering and pain of people, focusing on saying that what is happening in people’s lives is a moral or faith issue rather than structural injustices. Giving an example, one participant says, “Pray for change,” they say, “but we need permits, not prayers.” This statement shows that the immigrant is looking for something tangible that assists them in dealing with the situation at hand. The tensions between spiritual sustenance and political advocacy show the dual role of faith-based institutions as both a place of refuge and a site of depoliticisation. Even churches are subject to governmental persecution. Police closed our church, alleging “noise complaints”. They harass us because we assist immigrants in obtaining visas. Although the pastor’s advocacy, helping with visas, echoes the Sanctuary Movement in the United States (Coutin 1993), the state’s rejection emphasises the limits of grassroots opposition under a securitised immigration system. This experience shows the nation’s surveillance of migrant-led spaces and its bias against any form of organised support that goes against its exclusionary agenda.

In the middle of these difficulties, religious organisations have become an increasingly important, though flawed, source of support. Often filling in voids created by the government, churches, mosques, and faith-based organisations (FBOs) offer immigrants food, housing, and counselling (Burchardt 2013). For example, despite official opposition, Cape Town’s Central Methodist Church became well-known in the 2000s for housing thousands of Zimbabwean migrants (Crush and Tevera 2010). Still, FBOs have a mixed bag of roles. Although they provide quick relief, their ability to question institutional unfairness is limited. Some churches depoliticise pain, characterising it as a spiritual test rather than a call to action. Others, especially immigrant-led churches, are subject to official persecution; this was demonstrated in 2019 when a Zimbabwean church in Johannesburg closed for claimed noise violations. These interactions call attention to important issues regarding the possibilities and limitations of faith-based solidarity in environments of institutional violence. Thus, faith-based organisations and religious and spiritual institutions emerge as ambivalent spaces; they simultaneously proffer spaces of vibrant material support, spiritual refuge, and potential political neutralisation.

4.5. Decolonial Kinship, Cooperative and Collective Care

Assimilation into South African culture is difficult due to xenophobia and exclusion (Mubangizi 2021). To remain in control amidst challenges, some participants explained how they survived. Starting a sewing cooperative, a woman said, “Five of us saved R50 weekly. After a year, we bought machines. Now we make school uniforms and employ ten people. South Africans praise our ‘neat’ work.” Suitably, this initiative exemplifies community economies, where there is an exchange of collective savings and skills, making autonomous livelihoods outside formal and exclusionary systems. South Africans value our “neat work” labour; her narrative best illustrates Massey et al.’s (1993) idea of migrant entrepreneurialism, in which group savings and skill-sharing generate economic alternatives. The success of the cooperative, with South Africans purchasing their goods, challenged xenophobic preconceptions and promoted intergroup camaraderie by means of common economic interests. These economic dependencies have a propensity to subvert xenophobic narratives, recasting migrants from labels of job stealers to valued economic contributors.

Another refuge turned out to be community togetherness. Mama Ndlovu, the landlady of a participant, personified this allyship: “Mama treats me like her daughter.” We all suffer, Black, white, foreigner, she says, “Let’s help each other.” This narrative of cross-community solidarity is positioned to disrupt homogenising stories of pervasive xenophobia. It reveals pockets of relationality grounded in shared marginalisation. This story exposes typically disregarded areas of intergroup empathy in the literature and challenges homogenising ideologies of xenophobia. Rooted in similar hardships, Mama Ndlovu’s unity mirrors Freire’s (1970) concept of conscientisation, in which underprivileged people identify common oppressions and work to destroy them together. The existence of these micro-solidarities, though not systemic, shows the existence of a decolonial practice of building communities beyond the borders imposed by colonial apartheid legacies.

Still, perseverance coexisted with disenchantment. Despite the political unrest, several of the participants said they wanted to go back to Zimbabwe. A lady intending to return said, “Home is best; I want to be part of Zimbabwe’s development. Here I’m always a foreigner.” This conflict between hope and disappointment reflects circular disillusionment, in which hopes of return, even in the face of uncertainty, combine with the reality of exclusion. The enduring desire to return, regardless of the economic challenges currently in Zimbabwe, demonstrates the critical existential alienation produced by continuous foreignness in South Africa. A closer look at this tension between resilience and disillusionment apprehends the dual consciousness of the migrant and simultaneously builds life in the receiving nation at the same time as nurturing an identity and future that is connected to the sending nation.

4.6. Psychological Trauma, Supporting Organisations and Trauma-Informed Interventions

Besides the economic and physical harm, the lived experiences of Zimbabwean migrants reveal severe psychological trauma from xenophobic violence, denial of public healthcare, and continued family separation (Chekenya 2024; Vanyoro 2019). Participants described widespread panic, acute anxiety, and moral distress regarding their inability to protect or nurture dependents across borders. Faith-based organisations and local churches provide immediate spiritual comfort (Dube 2019) but often lack the clinical capacity or structural placement to address complex trauma (Kerwin 2024). Moreover, frontline social workers, non-governmental organisations and legal aid organisations face systemic barriers and legal ambiguity in their pursuit to provide psychosocial support to undocumented populations. Hence, it is crucial to embed trauma-informed care into transnational support systems. Trauma-informed care acknowledges the role of structural and historical violence in migrant mental health and the necessity of safety, trustworthiness, peer support, and empowerment in the provision of social services to displaced families.

5. Methodology

This study used empirical online data collection by sending online questionnaires through Zimbabwean networks, WhatsApp groups and religious networks of people living in South Africa. I chose this approach because migration issues are sensitive and some participants are potentially vulnerable. As put by Jacobsen and Landau (2003), migrants, particularly those who are illegal, fear victimisation, identification and deportation and are reluctant to share their stories in person. Advocating for online methods creates safer spaces for migrants while maintaining ethical rigour.

I gathered data between August 2024 and February 2025. Participants who fit the following criteria were sought via purposeful sampling of Zimbabweans in South Africa aged 18 and above. Twenty people in all, eleven women and nine men, representing a range of migratory statuses, asylum seekers, permanent residents, and illegal immigrants, made up the final sample. This demographic variety guaranteed insights on how interactions of gender, legal status, and age shape experiences of exclusion. This qualitative theme inquiry is methodologically appropriate with a sample of N = 20. Qualitative research emphasises empirical depth, ethical safety, participant trust, and rich lived narrative over broad statistical generalisability, especially among undocumented and legally fragile migrant groups where the concerns of monitoring, extortion, and deportation are great. The sample reached thematic saturation on daily microaggressions, legal precarity and disruptions to the care economy, corroborating existing patterns in the Southern African migration literature. Emphasising diversity and outreach in English and Shona will help to meet different degrees of literacy. Among the many jobs participants worked in were construction, domestic, farm, vending, taxi driving, hairdressing, and unofficial commerce. Living quarters ranged in nature; some lived alone, and others cohabitated with friends or family. I asked open-ended questions that centred on their lived experiences in South Africa.

I used a thematic approach to analyse the data. I applied Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis to find trends in participants’ stories, therefore giving their voices top priority to reflect the complexity of marginalisation and resilience. NVivo software was used inductively to examine responses. First coding revealed repeating ideas (like ‘police harassment’ and ‘documentation delays’). These codes were arranged according to more general themes (like structural exclusion and resilience techniques). References to being ‘paid less than locals’, for example, fell under economic exploitation.

Informed consent was gathered electronically, as detailed in the questionnaire, stating that anyone participating and returning the data was freely giving consent and that all their information would be anonymous in this study. I also guaranteed confidentiality for all the information participants provided. I kept the data on my password-protected drive. Ethical clearance was obtained from the University of South Africa. I exercised reflexivity as a Zimbabwean migrant now living in the United Kingdom; I admitted my prejudices and sought not to compare my experiences with Zimbabweans in South Africa. I prioritised the voices and experiences of immigrants in South Africa. The limitation of the study was that the sample size of 20 participants is small, thereby restricting broad generalisability. However, this insight gathered from the participants was rich and provided deeper knowledge about the internal migration between neighbouring Southern African countries.

6. Recommendations

The results show together how intersectionality and systemic violence interact to generate layered precarity. A Zimbabwean woman with disability refused healthcare (“no treatments at hospitals”), for instance, and experienced interlocking oppressions: her condition aggravated xenophobic exclusion, while her gender increased economic vulnerability. This intersectional perspective forces academics to investigate how axes of identity influence systematic injury, therefore challenging Galtung’s (1969) structural violence paradigm.

Likewise, xenophobic violence reflects broader structural inequalities as post-apartheid neoliberalism pushes underprivileged groups against one another (Fanon 1963), not only black-on-black conflict. Interpersonal deaths show helplessness and how communities are disintegrated.

Legal reforms should simplify paperwork procedures and punish wage fraud. Participants’ cries, “Government must help those with proper documentation,” demand open, effective bureaucracies that honour immigrants’ contributions rather than denigrate them. The 2022 decision of Botswana to pardon 20,000 unregistered Zimbabweans provides a model for rights-based regularisation. On the other hand, South Africa’s commitment to the African Union’s Migration Policy Framework stays performative, as demonstrated by its rejection of the ratification of the Kampala Convention on internally displaced persons (African Union 2018).

Critical engagement with the critique of ‘coloniality of human rights’ by Maldonado-Torres (2007) is made in this study in the formulation of policy suggestions. The uncritical use of state-centric legal structures risks repeating the institutional border logics that reinforce administrative precarity. Therefore, decolonial solutions must go beyond performative legislative ratifications to encourage community-rooted, cross-border social work networks and grassroots care cooperatives that directly restore human dignity. Using Interdisciplinary and Trauma-Informed Social Work perspectives: Establish cross-border social work networks between South Africa and Zimbabwe for trauma-informed family counselling, child protection, and reunification support for stretched households.

Empowering Supporting Entities: Provide legal protections and state funding for non-governmental organisations, social workers and faith-based sanctuaries that serve undocumented and vulnerable migrant groups, shielding these bodies from administrative harassment.

(Dube 2019)

Human Rights & Intersectional Policy Coherence: Align national immigration policies with regional human rights standards (e.g., AU Migration Policy Framework 2021) to highlight family preservation, access to healthcare for disabled migrants (Meekosha 2011), and legal regularisation.

7. Conclusions

This study showed the intersectionality of discrimination, institutional violence, and aspects of ethnicity, hating the Blackness of Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa. The decolonial and intersectional lens provided insights to understand how these factors are rooted in colonial and apartheid legacies and sustained through post-colonial policies and corruption. The unprecedented emergence of COVID-19 amplified these factors and showed how migrants are stripped of their livelihoods, fracturing transnational families and networks. Religion, spirituality, and faith-based organisations provided spiritual support but often depoliticised the support. Migrants showed resilience and improvised informal economies, spiritual networks, and stronger community solidarity. Survival and resistance challenge xenophobia and embody forms of dismantling colonial hierarchies. This study recommends that migration justice should be framed using decolonial and intersectional policy reforms. By centring the lived experiences of migrants, it provides possibilities to reimagine an inclusive South Africa beyond apartheid. Future studies should do longitudinal and participatory research examining how changing immigration policies should impact intra-national migration.