Wednesday, October 8, 2025  3:00pm - 4:30pm  Venue:  401 Warren Hall     virtual attendees registration   Register

Recent decades have seen a surge in extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric in many countries and regions, including the Southern African Region, despite the African Union's emphasis on continental mobility as a key aspect of sustainable development. Xenophobia, a form of hatred directed at foreigners, immigrants, and people who are perceived as foreigners, has been flooding social media. The COVID-19 pandemic further amplified xenophobic sentiment in politics, the media, and online, especially toward Chinese people and people of East Asian descent (Shen et al. 2022). Documented harms to groups and individuals range from fear and dignitary insults to increased face-to-face encounters and hate-motivated violence. At the policy level, anti-immigrant sentiment leads to enforcement policies that shock the conscience. Political candidates and government leaders have “bully pulpit” options such as modulating speech about immigrants and emphasizing positive rather than punitive immigration policy, but the malleability of public sentiment encourages them to take the low road. Inter-governmental bodies and civil society, including academia, are responding to this devastating trend. 

South Africa was one of the first - if not the first - country to develop a national action plan to address xenophobia. The plan was soon criticized for falling short of the “radically transformative agenda” needed to address escalating violence against immigrants effectively (Dratwa 2024). Though traditionally a country of origin, Zambia is also a country of transit and a host to migrant communities. Zambia “awoke to [the] scourge” of xenophobia in a 2016 incident of mass violence against Rwandan refugees in Lusaka (Akinola 2018). As the tenth anniversary of this attack approaches, our speakers will discuss deeper meanings behind xenophobia and how the Southern African Region is addressing this scourge.