Disrupting racial capitalism: solidarity and intersectional organising strategies for migrant workers in South Africa

Escalating xenophobic violence against migrant workers in post-apartheid South Africa exposes the
enduring logics of racial capitalism that continue to shape labour migration, economic exploitation,
and social exclusion. Rather than treating contemporary anti-migrant mobilisation as an episodic
crisis, I argue that xenophobia is rooted in historically constituted labour migration regimes that
reproduce racialised inequality, economic dispossession, border securitisation, and institutionalised
xenophobia. Drawing on Gargi Bhattacharyya’s theorisation of racial capitalism and employing a
sociological-historical and intersectional analytical framework, the analysis demonstrates how statecrafted
migration policies, exclusionary labour markets, sovereign ‘colonial’ borders and nationalist
discourses sustain differentiated forms of labour exploitation while rendering migrant workers
simultaneously indispensable to capital accumulation and socially disposable. Against this backdrop,
the study foregrounds migrant workers’ agency by examining how trade unions, migrant-rights
organisations, and grassroots movements cultivate intersectional organising strategies that confront
racism, Afrophobia, xenophobia, sexism, and class exploitation. Moving beyond accounts that portray
migrant organising primarily as a defensive response to exclusion, I argue that intersectional
organising constitutes a practical strategy for disrupting racial capitalism by challenging the social,
political, and economic relations through which racialised labour exploitation is reproduced. In doing
so, the study contributes to contemporary debates on racial capitalism, migration governance, labour
geography, and intersectional labour organising by advancing solidarity as both a strategy of
resistance and a transformative political agenda. Disrupting racial capitalism, I conclude, requires
dismantling colonial border logics, confronting institutionalised xenophobia, and advancing universal
labour rights through transnational, migrant-led forms of solidarity grounded in justice, equity, and
human dignity.