UKZN Clinical Sociologist recently delivered a keynote address on Distinctive and Continued Phases of Global South Migration: Human Security; Gender; Geography; Race and Class Intersections to members of the Brazilian Brincadas Project.
The Project is led by Professor Fernanda Liberali at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP). The project is an extension of a trans-Atlantic project devised by a team of global scholars with Seedat-Khan as the principal investigator. Brincadas aims to conceptualise clinical interventions, capable of mitigating adverse effects of the economic global crisis on migrants human security and access.
Seedat-Khan’s paper focused on the increasing difficulty of harmonizing migration management policies for Africa, and global south as a preferred destination for migrants. Her keynote probed intersections of diversity, education, mobility and exclusion. Migration challenges of diverse mobilities, irregular migration, include women and unaccompanied minors; violence against migrants; prevalence of communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis; and continued emigration of skilled nationals.
These typical of global south challenges are rooted in historical unequal experiences exacerbated by the SARS-CoV-2 disproportionate economic crisis. Migrants access and right to inclusion, access, education, services and employment compromises their well-being.
An overwhelming presence of migrants in South Africa’s domestic, security, transport, service and informal sectors compound their economic marginalisation and exploitation. Migrant status, intersect with race, gender, geography and class, influences assimilation affecting transition and, access to education, employment, development and training opportunities. In the absence of fundamental human rights and access, migrants are stripped of agency.
‘Shaping a nondiscriminatory post-pandemic Africa is South Africa’s defining role. The current state of migrants in South Africa mandates urgent attention to co-produce impactful interdisciplinary interventions lead by fundamental principles of applied and clinical sociology. Interventions must build wellbeing, promote recovery, support economic renewal and capitalise of human resilience in the Global South. Scientific scholarship is instrumental to develop and co-produce context-specific interventions to current and post-pandemic African migrants contexts,’ said Seedat-Khan.
Co-production with migrants as citizen scientists produces in distinctive clinical models that address lived human security, gender, geography, race and class challenges, culminating in migrants inclusion and wellbeing. Scientific migrant-centred frameworks inform opportunities to synergise policy and practice via clinical interventions. Ultimately, co-produced clinical interventions underscore migrants access to human rights that subscribe to a universal humanistic social contract to augment wellbeing.
Pervasive social issues discussed were xenophobia; systematic institutional inequality; gendered, lone, and child migration, labour and exploitation in the global south. ‘Domestic, security, transport, service, and informal sectors are dominated by migrants, compounding migrants’ economic marginalization and exploitation, she added. She highlighted that continental African Migration was rooted in scrambled colonial borders that disrupted economic, political, religious, and cultural conventions in pursuit of profit.
Clinical interventions foster wellbeing, promote recovery, support economic renewal, and capitalise on human resilience in the Global South, she said: ‘It is critical for scholars to develop and co-produce context-specific interventions for global south migrants, both now and post-pandemic. Adopting migrant-centred frameworks inform effective clinical interventions, policy, and practice to address human (in)security, gender, geography, race, conflict and class’.
Seedat-Khan concluded that ‘in the end, co-produced clinical interventions ensure migrants’ access to human rights that subscribe to a humanistic social contract.’
