Since the end of apartheid, immigration into South Africa has increased dramatically. Migration has become a volatile issue, with South Africans increasingly xenophobic and threatened by the influx of foreigners. Simultaneously, the question of national identity has increased in significance, with politicians and academics anxious to capture an understanding of the evolution and complementarity of parallel identities and group loyalties. In the rush to develop a better understanding of identity formation, the opportunity to examine the impacts of hostility on identity, as in the example of migrant individuals and communities in South Africa, has been over-looked. How migrant identities emerge, and how communities play a role in identities and in the survival of individuals, has been a neglected facet of migration in South Africa. This article, constructed largely from interviews with migrants, presents a picture of the emergence of migrant communities in South African society and seeks to enrich understanding of the complexities of migrant society within the country."On one level, this article is a straightforward register of some of the more salient comments and experiences of foreign migrants in contemporary South African society.... At another, more abstract level, the article explores the emergence of migrant identity within traditional conceptualizations which view identity as an inherently nationalist creation. It looks at the construction of identity as a survival mechanism in a new society, and at the role that formation of migrant communities plays in the establishment of this sense of identity." (EXCERPT)

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national identity migrants experience post-apartheid South Africa immigration