Refugees and Citizens on the Margins: Sufferings Recognized, Sufferings Denied

This chapter considers the suffering of citizens in refugee-hosting nations where extreme inequality and structural violence creates entrenched local misery. What hope might policy makers and human rights advocates have in striving for the protection of refugees and migrants in highly volatile and violent contexts of reception? Drawing from the experience of refugees and migrants in South Africa, this paper excavates the denied suffering of poor Black South African citizens which inevitably shapes their relationship with refugees who arrive at their shores in search of a safe haven. The analysis grapples with the contradictions found in South Africa’s position as a major refugee-hosting nation and its own reality of having a large segment of its Black populations mired in much injustice, violence, exclusion, and apathy. The aim is ultimately to link the intertwined nature of the sufferings for both these groups and to argue for interventions that are more holistic to alleviate both groups’ sufferings. Linking the fate of newcomers and citizens and the violence both groups confront exposes the inadequacy that emerges when justice for refugees is sought with little effort to also intervene and change the dehumanizing conditions that local populations confront in their daily lives.