Gender, Power and Space-Making in the City of Johannesburg

This book uses gender and the history of migration between Zimbabwe and South Africa to highlight a marginal area of research in the Global South. It investigates the rich everyday experiences of Zimbabwean immigrant women classified by South African law as illegal. It envisions a kind of citizenship which is sensitive and aware of gender issues for black working-class women in Johannesburg. This book draws on fieldwork and analysis to examine how gender and migration are integrated into the processes of globalization and by centering the agency of women, it helps us to understand how 'bordered femininity' explains the experiences of being an undocumented woman. This approach decolonizes our understanding of borders and the latter's relationship to the changing transnational and transcultural landscape phenomena, which extends from the political to the cultural, from the (nation) state to everyday social acts at the everyday level of border practices. It will be of interest to students and researchers interested in gender studies, African studies, international policy and development, geography, Southern African history, human rights, migration studies and decolonial studies.

Nigel Mxolisi Landa is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the Department of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. His research focuses on the intersection of gender with migration, state building, and the politics of belonging. His research is inspired by social justice and Afro-feminist worldviews.

1. Introduction.- 2. The Contours of Migration in Southern Africa.- 3. Reflections on Borders: Theory and Practice.- 4. Pathways into Johannesburg and Forging Livelihoods.- 5. Material Absence of Fathers and Life in Johannesburg.- 6. Navigating Space and Belonging in Johannesburg.- 7. Social Exclusion, the State, and Agency.- 8. Epilogue: Decolonizing Borders and Bordering.