COVID-19, Xenophobia and the Displacement of Disabled Undocumented African Migrant in South Africa

The article examines how the COVID-19 pandemic and xenophobia exacerbated existing vulnerabilities of undocumented disabled African migrant children in South Africa. Disabled African migrants in South Africa faced direct impacts of COVID-19 and xenophobia such as disrupted health services, income losses, interrupted access to school and enormous socioeconomic challenges. These challenges bear directly on the well-being of disabled undocumented African migrants whose lives are already marked by insecurity. The safety of these displaced undocumented migrants is under threat. They are at risk of missing out on accurate public health information, due to language barriers or being cut off from communication networks. The contribution of this chapter is twofold. First, it provides theoretical dimensions of the risks for disabled undocumented African migrants in South Africa. Gidden’s theory of structuration is used to examine the structural risks associated with being a disabled undocumented African migrant in South Africa. The theory’s salient features viz, structure, agency, and duality of structure are used. The main aim is to establish how Giddens’s conversation with the structure and agency provides theoretical insights into the individual ability of the disabled undocumented African migrant to respond to, and how they (re)produce unintended consequences that serve as contextual solutions to challenges caused by COVID-19 and xenophobia. Secondly, the chapter develops a synthetic model of migration which provides a cost-benefit analysis of the challenges and opportunities of displaced and disabled undocumented migrants.