Segmented urban space and the ethics of belonging in migrants’ Johannesburg

ABSTRACT

This article argues, from an ethnographic perspective and in the particular context of a group of young, black, low-income, Zimbabwean male migrants in Johannesburg, that the ethics of belonging among them are underpinned by the values of survival and mutual recognition. This occurs in a spatially demarcated manner informed by how the migrants’ perceive their social location and identity in different spaces in the city. Applying a micro spatial lens to their belonging narratives exposes layered ethics aimed at negotiating their own belonging and success in the city while highlighting reciprocal obligations attached to recognition of the other. The value of recognition is particularly attached to spaces where the interlocutors feel at home, and the article suggests that through interrogating such spaces in Johannesburg, and other urban centres, different role players can attempt to imagine an inclusive city.

KEYWORDS:

• Belonging
• Johannesburg
• liberative ethics
• migration
• survival
• recognition

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the young people who participated in this research for their time, sharing and generosity; colleagues who commented on the early versions of these ideas in conferences in London and Pretoria in 2015; Siphiwe Dube, Clementine Nishimwe and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on previous drafts of the article; and Marie-Louise Karttunen for the language editing. Finally, I wish to express thanks for the funding received from the Academy of Finland through the Youth at the Margins project (University of Helsinki, Finland) and from the University of South Africa at earlier stages of this project. Yet as the author I am responsible for any opinion, conclusion or recommendation expressed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Elina Hankela http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5159-4425

Notes

1 Informants names are anonymised.

2 Besides these interlocutors interviewed individually, some of whom also participated in focus group sessions, a fourteenth man, slightly older than the others, attended one focus group session.

3 One of the young men told me that had come to South Africa already at the age of nine.