Xenophilia in a Multi-cultural Urban Neighborhood of Pretoria, South Africa: An Auto-ethnographic Account

The increased immigration to post-apartheid South Africa of Black African migrants has given rise to widespread xenophobic sentiments and recurrent violence against them. Over the past three decades, migration scholars have extensively studied the phenomenon of xenophobia as a major problem in citizen–migrant relations. However, most migration scholars’ predominant focus on xenophobia in South Africa appears to have overlooked positive migrant–citizen relations in some places, though a few scholars have noted the presence of xenophilia in certain communities. Drawing on an auto-ethnographic qualitative approach, this paper reports on my own lived experiences, as a Black African refugee, with xenophilia in my everyday interactions in a multi-cultural urban suburb of Sunnyside, Pretoria. This paper attempts to add nuance to existing scholarship on citizen–non-citizen relations in post-apartheid South Africa. I argue that multi-cultural urban neighborhoods in South Africa, where there are everyday inter-ethnic interactions, friendships, amenities, services, and shared spaces, tend to function as drivers of social cohesion and inter-group conviviality.