To stay here is to suffer, to return home is to perish: Entangled Zimbabwean migrants, precarity, and the crisis of return in post-apartheid South Africa

Why This Story of Being Stuck Matters

Across Southern Africa, millions move in search of safety, work, and dignity. This article follows Zimbabwean migrants living in South Africa who feel trapped between two hard places: a country where they are increasingly unwanted, and a homeland many describe as impossible to live in. By listening closely to their daily struggles, the study shows how policies, policing, and prejudice combine to keep people in a permanent state of waiting, where they can neither settle securely nor safely return home.

Life Lived on a Constant Edge

The paper argues that the key drama of Zimbabwean migration is no longer the border crossing itself, but what happens after arrival. Inside South African cities such as Cape Town, Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, and Pretoria, migrants encounter what the author calls “internal bordering.” This means that ordinary spaces become checkpoints: police stops on the street, documentation inspections at work, landlords demanding proof of status, and bureaucratic offices that can delay or deny paperwork. Even when people hold valid permits, these may be short-term, constantly expiring, and vulnerable to sudden policy changes. The result is that migrants feel permanently “deportable” – always aware that their right to stay can be questioned at any moment, even if they are never actually removed.

Hostility in the Streets, Not Just on Paper

Beyond official rules, everyday hostility deepens this insecurity. In a South Africa marked by high unemployment and unequal access to services, migrants from elsewhere in Africa are often blamed for job losses and crime. Community movements and vigilante groups mobilize around slogans that cast “foreigners” as a problem to be solved. In practice, this turns neighbours, customers, and colleagues into informal border guards. Participants in the study describe being shouted at to “go home,” facing threats of violence during protests, and being told by landlords or employers that their presence makes them a risk. Even universities, which might be expected to be safe and open spaces, can reproduce these patterns by treating foreign African academics as useful but never fully belonging. Together, these social pressures make migrants feel that they are only tolerated on sufferance.

A Home That No Longer Feels Safe

Yet the answer is not as simple as “just go back.” The article traces how, over more than two decades, Zimbabwe has gone through repeated waves of economic and political crisis: shrinking formal employment, turbulent land reforms, extreme inflation that wiped out savings, unstable currencies, and under-resourced public services. Many migrants recall that these conditions pushed them to leave in the first place. When they imagine returning, they see few stable jobs, fragile health and education systems, and ongoing political tensions. Some interviewees tried to return, only to find that small businesses collapsed under constantly changing prices or that they felt unsafe speaking openly about politics. They then re-migrated to South Africa, often poorer than before. For them, “home” is emotionally powerful but practically unreliable.

The Crisis of Return: When Going Back Is Not a Real Choice

Putting these pieces together, the author develops the idea of a “crisis of return.” Migrants often say, “I want to go back home,” but this longing functions less as a concrete plan and more as a way to hold on to dignity in the face of exclusion. Return is morally and emotionally compelling – it promises family reunions and a sense of rootedness – yet, in reality, it can mean joblessness, hunger, or renewed repression. At the same time, life in South Africa is organised around short-term permits, sudden policy shifts, and the threat of raids or violence. This double bind produces what the paper calls a “rightless temporality”: a stretched-out present in which people are always waiting for documents, decisions, or the next crisis, unable to plot stable futures in either place.

What Needs to Change

The article concludes that this problem cannot be solved by border control alone. South Africa needs to stop deliberately managing migrants through uncertainty and fear, for example by replacing endlessly extended temporary permits and heavy-handed policing with clear, affordable, and durable pathways to legal stay and workplace protection. At the same time, Zimbabwe and similar sending countries must rebuild the basic conditions that make life at home liveable: more stable economies, reliable public services, and accountable politics. Only when people can count on rights and security on at least one side of the border will “going home” become a real option instead of an impossible dream.

Citation: Bhanye, J. To stay here is to suffer, to return home is to perish: Entangled Zimbabwean migrants, precarity, and the crisis of return in post-apartheid South Africa. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 13, 586 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06943-4

Keywords: Zimbabwean migrants, South Africa, xenophobia, return migration, precarious citizenship