Kanyimbu, Nawej Mannix2025-11-202025-11-202025https://hdl.handle.net/10566/21440Contemporary migration has become more complex during the era of globalisation, with heterogenous actors and places of departure, transit, and destination. This has compelled mechanisms of control and regulation, subjecting migrants to bureaucratic procedures in the governance of migration. After attaining its democratic dispensation in 1994, South Africa has become a destination for migrants of various backgrounds and categories. However, inequality and unemployment in the country have grown due to the legacy of apartheid, and migrants – particularly from African countries – have been exposed to xenophobia and discrimination. Furthermore, obstacles in receiving visas and permits and securing employment have also hindered migrant integration in South Africa, creating uncertainty of the future and a protracted mode of waiting. Referred to as migrant temporality, in this study this concept focuses on how the migration bureaucracy of South Africa creates and has an impact on these temporal modes of migrant life, such as waiting, uncertainty, aspiration, life course and future-making.enMigrationTemporalityBureaucracyDemocratic Republic of the CongoSouth AfricaThesis