This monograph blends legal and social history in this engaging account of early conceptions of South African citizenship. The argument is that distinctively South African notions of citizenship and nationality come out of the period 1897 to 1937, through legislation and official practices employing the key concept of ‘prohibited immigrant’ and seeking to regulate the mobility of three population groups: African, Asian and European. Further, the regulation and administration of immigrants from the Indian sub-continent, in particular, provided the basis for the vision and eventual reality of a unified, although structurally unequal, South African population.This book fits into the growing field of Mobility Studies, which seeks to understand and document the migration of people both within and across national borders, while exploring the origins of those borders. In addition to nationality and citizenship, it touches on African pass laws, the origins of the Public Protector, the scheme importing Chinese labour to the gold mines, the development of internal bureaucratic legality, and India-South Africa intra-imperial relations. With its attention to the role of law in state-building and its understanding of the central place of implementation and administrative law in migration policy, this book offers a distinctive focus on the relationship between migration and citizenship.
Author(s): Jonathan Klaaren
Edition: 1
Publisher: UCT Press/Juta and Company (Pty) Ltd
Year: 2017
Language: English
Pages: 260
City: Cape Town
Front cover
Title page
Imprint page
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Legislation
Glossary
Chapter 1: South African citizenship in context
Introduction
Building a population
Migration and mobility studies
The development of South Africa's legal culture
The structure of this book
Chapter 2: Early practices of regulating mobility
Early mobility regimes directed at Asians: Population registration
Migration regulation of Indians in Natal
Migration regulation of Indians in the Transvaal
Migration regulation of Indians in the Orange Free State
The Cape Colony and regulation of the Chinese
Early mobility regimes directed at Africans: Pre-union pass laws
Laws affecting African mobility in the Cape
Laws on African mobility in Natal
African mobility regulation in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State
The Chinese mine-labour scheme
Conclusion
Chapter 3: The rise of borders
Immigration laws of the Cape
Laws pertaining to nationality in the Cape and Natal
Immigration and related legislation in the Transvaal
Citizenship and nationality in the Transvaal
Immigration and related legislation in the Orange Free State
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Union, the Act and the Registrar of Asiatics, 1907–1914
Economic and political unification
Union nationality and immigration laws
The registration of Asiatics and the Act
Conclusion
Chapter 5: Nationalisation of the immigration bureaucracy, 1914–1927
The nationalisation of migration administration
The immigration bureucracy and the development of the rule of law
The establishment of the commissioner for immigration and Asiatic affairs
Conclusion
Chapter 6: African mobility and bureaucracy, 1911–1927
Two approaches for regulationg extra-Union Africans
The rise of an internal boundary
Conclusion
Chapter 7: The Commissioner’s population, 1927–1937
The restriction of mobility and a nationalised population
The 1933 repeal of the Chinese exclusion ACT
Conclusion
Chapter 8: One official South Africa
An official problem but differing solutions
An official solution
An official failure
Conclusion
Chapter 9: Enacting nationality, 1927–1937
The inauguration of Union nationality
The Act of 1930-1931 and population regulation
The Acts of 1937 and population regulation
Conclusion
Chapter 10: South African citizenship and the way forward
Post-apartheid contestations of South African citizenship
Contemporary South African citizenship policy
Reflections on the new South African immigration politics: Towards Afropolitan denizenship?
Bibliography
Index
