Navigating uncertainty: the temporalities of asylum seeking in Cape Town, South Africa

There is little scholarly attention paid to self-settled asylum seekers and refugees living outside of refugee camps in Africa. Specifically, the lack of research on residential mobility and survival strategies means little is known about refugee resistance and experiences living through the precarious conditions specifically tied to protracted displacement in African cities. This three-article dissertation delves into the experiences of refugees seeking asylum in Cape Town, South Africa by exploring the intricate relationship between uncertainty and agency. It challenges the traditional perception of refugees as passive victims, highlighting their resilience and their tactical navigation of complex bureaucratic hurdles. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with 74 refugees, this dissertation critically examines the temporalities of displacement, revealing how refugees actively engage in strategies of survival, build social connections, and even engage in political acts of protest and refusal. The first article focuses on how bureaucratic systems and restrictive policies produce and amplify uncertainty by exposing refugees to economic vulnerability, administrative delays, and the ongoing threat of secondary displacements during the refugee status determination process. The second article combines in-depth ethnographic analysis and the use of GIS mapping to trace refugees' housing trajectories. This article reveals how their residential mobility challenges the linear temporal continuum of uncertainty normally assumed in the forced migration literature by exposing the cyclical and concurrent nature of the multiple uncertainties experienced because of residential mobility. The third article examines the major 2019-2020 refugee protest in Cape Town’s city center, exploring how refugees employed acts of refusal as a tool for disrupting imposed temporalities and demanding greater control over their futures. This dissertation makes significant contributions and introduces the theoretical concepts of the "runaround" and "temporal appropriation" as frameworks for interpreting the temporal registers of the challenges faced by refugees and their agentic solutions respectively. This dissertation makes visible the experience of navigating uncertainty while also drawing attention to the institutions, authorities, and circumstances that produce or contribute to the uncertainty.