Refugee Status as Patronage Good? Transnational Party Mobilization, Asylum Policy, and the Plight of Zimbabweans in South Africa

This article examines the transnational operations of the Zimbabwean opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to build support within South Africa during the 2000s. Drawing on original interviews with MDC party officials and Zimbabwe diaspora civil society leaders as well as internal documents from Zimbabwean civil society organizations, this article explores the puzzle of how and why a political party would assist its constituents to remain outside of the country. The case expands the growing literature on transnational party mobilization, which has to date focused primarily on cases in receiving countries in the Global North, by exploring the particular challenges facing political parties to mobilize supporters in the contexts of poverty, political violence, and legal precarity. Moreover, the collaboration of an external political party with a host country in both refugee status determination and in the development of special permits for its citizens abroad further destabilizes the notion that states apply uniform legal criteria when deciding asylum cases. Indeed, the case of Zimbabweans in South Africa illuminates how the line between forced and voluntary migration is both increasingly difficult to delineate, and has increasingly dire consequences for populations that do not fit precisely within legal determinations of mass refugee movements.