The role of the Department of Social Development in enabling social cohesion between foreigners and South Africans in Hammasdale, KwaZulu Natal
This study seeks to both assess and better understand the role played by the department of social development in enabling social cohesion between South African based foreigners and South Africans. Significant research on issues of social cohesion against xenophobic tension has been reported, focusing on the networks and activities of local civil societies of migrants. Addressing South Africa's social cohesion problem is a very important aspect, especially given the history of systemic poverty, high unemployment, and racial discrimination. In South Africa's history, it is shown that building a cohesive society demands more attention to poverty reduction, injustice, social divisions, and exclussion. A qualitative approach was employed as the research method for this study, the used in-depth-interviews as a tool for collecting data. The study used proportionate sampling procedures to select the respondents and to get the population size of registered foreigners. In particular, the study used snowball sampling to reach the target sample size. In summary there were 18 participants involved in the study, 8 Soutrh African based foreign nationals, 10 indigenous South African community members and 2 Department of social development officials. The findings of this research indicates that challenges faced by foreign nationals when transitioning from their countries of origin to South Africa includes: xenophobic attacks, obtaining documentation and surviving stigmas attached to all foreigners particularly being accused of partaking in criminal activities. Therefore, championing social cohesion between foreign nationals and South Africans is essential to ensure that they mitigate the challenges usually encountered by foreign nationals during both their adaption phase and stay in South Africa. However, it was interesting to note that the study equally revealed that foreign nationals capitalise on coping mechanisms such a religion, social networ
Social cohesion, Racism, Xenophobia and migration
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