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Informal Solidarity, Reciprocity and Resistance as Social Mechanisms against Migration-related Discrimination in Host Societies

Africa
Integration
Migration
Social Movements
Immigration
Power
Solidarity
State Power

Abstract

This paper engages the notion that immigrants’ interactions with formal and informal practices and institutions in host societies are influenced by a combination of individual heterogeneities (education, language, migration legal status, gender, length of stay, etc) as well as various other social mechanisms (acculturation, solidarity, reciprocity, resistance etc). Often in mitigating migration-related discrimination and exclusion in these migration destinations and/or routes, socially-arranged informal practices of solidarity, reciprocity and resistance are adopted as counter-strategy or rebellion. In this paper, I demonstrate that individual and collective agency manifested as a form of invisible power drawn to out-manoeuvre the state and societal power imbalances which infringed on minorities’ rights and well-being during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The paper offers empirical evidence of this structure-agency interface in close reference to James Scott’s "Everyday Forms of Resistance" as well as the Pan-African solidarity ethos of "Ubuthu".