Engaged research and reflexive methodologies: (auto)ethnographic narratives of forced migrants in Cape Town, South Africa

Abstract

This memory by the first author, Kazadi, is the starting point of many long years of working to build a new life and eventually pursue higher education in South Africa. Kazadi’s journey to South Africa is not very different than that of many Congolese refugees in Cape Town who, since the 1990s, have fled the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) due to wars and economic instability and have ended up working in informal jobs and navigating precarity in the city in search of livelihoods and a sense of belonging. However, his experience is also somewhat unique because he has been able to pursue a PhD, conducting research on forced migrant issues within the Congolese refugee community in South Africa. Congolese are one of the prominent refugee communities in South Africa (Rugunanan & Smit, 2011; Vuninga, 2021). Like many forced migrants in South Africa, they have and continue to struggle with obtaining permits and formal employment (Nyamnjoh et al., 2021; Rugunanan & Smit, 2011), often relying on their own community migrant networks to get by (Owen, 2015).