Opportunities & Challenges of Critical Mapping of Xenophobic Violence in South Africa
Alexandra Hiropoulos Postdoctoral Research Fellow African Centre for Migration & Society University of the Witwatersrand
Xenophobic Violence in South Africa • Characteristics of migration to South Africa • Domestic & international • Immigration system • Anti-foreigner sentiment & violence • Political context & “Xenophobia” • Understanding of place? • Limited information on the frequency, location, and causes of attacks
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Improved data collection and quality Rapid response network / Verifications Enhanced collaboration with government & civil society partners (e.g. SALGA, City of Joburg) Improved protection of victims • Early warning & advocacy Greater public awareness • Xenowatch.org • Analysis, briefs, etc.
Xenophobic Assaults
Damage to Property / Looting
Interpretation of Maps • What do you see? • Frequencies • Hot-spots? • Crime counts/high population? • Areas of concentration? • Exploratory spatial data analysis • Moran’s I, LISA statistics
Spatial Distribution of Anti-Foreigner Violence
Douglasdale
Alexandra
Johannesburg CBD
Clusters of Anti-Foreigner Violence
Alexandra Germiston Soweto
Johannesburg CBD
Crime Mapping & Spatial Thinking • Mapping of social phenomena • Use of Geographic Information Systems • Mapping/visualization of spatial patterns • Spatial thinking • Focus is on people and the communities in which they live • The consideration of the relative locations of social phenomena, the causes of the locational pattern, and the pattern’s consequences (Logan, 2012)
Critical Cartography • Maps remain largely superficial and uncritical • Critical cartography • New mapping techniques • Theoretical critiques • ‘Subversive cartographies’ & artistic community • Maps privilege certain ways of seeing and support dominant political structures • Mapping and GIS technologies offer unprecedented opportunities for new forms of surveillance and tracking (Kindynis, 2014)
Artist unknown, 1929, Surrealist Map of the World.From ‘Le Surréalisme en 1929’, special issue of Variétés (1929: 26–7).
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Xenowatch purposes and outputs Considerations: • What is xenophobic and non-xenophobic? E.g. looting • Criteria for inclusion - What are we actually measuring? • Data Sources (official sources; quant, qual) • Availability of spatial data • Vantage point? • How will authorities view output?
Measuring Social Processes • Measures of economic deprivation & social marginalization • Racial & linguistic heterogeneity, unemployment, education levels, access to basic services, and spatial proximity to violence-affected areas • Vigilantism and police legitimacy • Symbolic goods? Cohesiveness & identity • High crime? • GIS is surprisingly compatible with non-quantitative analytical techniques, including ethnographies and other qualitative analytical methods (Pavlovskaya 2006)
Some spatial questions to be asked: • What is the influence of place on social relations and xenophobic violence? • Are surrounding structural conditions associated with the occurrence of anti-foreigner violence? • Where are attacks occurring in relation to other places; are they concentrated in city centres, rural areas, and/or townships? • What are the causes of the locational patterns; does proximity to places experiencing xenophobic violence matter? • How do these spatial patterns translate into social relations?
Challenges • Maps make reality as much as they represent it. • Who will police the criminologists? • E.g. environmental ‘criminology’ • Theory/Assumption-free • Position within academy and social theory • Evidence – based research • More policy relevant than observational research? • Unintended consequences of stop and frisk policies based on experimental evidence
Maps can be powerful tools for social justice. • New approaches for research and opportunities for more critically informed, political-engaged mappings of crime and its control. • Can establish a powerful counter-narrative to SA governments’ assertions • Mapping and its implication in crime should constitute an object of enquiry in itself (Kindynis, 2014)