'Kick out the Foreigners': Understanding the May 2008 violence in the Johannesburg area

Abstract

This thesis seeks to explain the anti-immigrant violence that sparked in the Johannesburg area, South Africa in May 2008 on the basis of a discursive approach and the elite theory of violent conflict. In contrast to what has often been argued my scholars, this thesis argues that the violence was not the result of relative deprivation or apartheid’s legacy. Rather national and local discourses on black African foreigners and local dynamics in townships, and the interaction between those two, seem to be the key to a better and more in-depth understanding of the violence.