“Dancing on the ceiling” : young Black entrepreneurs leveraging capitals across sub-fields in Johannesburg tourism

ABSTRACT

Rather than framing the South African youth unemployment debate in deficit terms, highlighting a lack of skills, educational and economic growth, this study focuses on creative practices and aspirations of Black youth in the Johannesburg tour- ism industry. This group’s activities included tours of former migrant hostels, derelict buildings and township bicycle tours. These young entrepreneurs were placed at a fault line between township and mainstream economies, hustling capitals from various spaces to generate an income. Life histories of four young male entrepreneurs are described in detail. Their knowledge of and access to the inner-city and townships was desirable to certain tourists, creating a demand for “raw” or “authentic” experiences in informal settings. However, their origins in marginalised spaces, the operations of the main- stream capitalist economy and limited financial capital produced structural barriers to their rising too high. Johannesburg therefore mediated the acquisition and use of different forms of capital that Black youth tried to accumulate and use for income generation opportunities in the tourism sector. The inner-city and townships formed both a ceiling and a “dance floor,” enabling them to create innovative livelihoods, but these sites simultaneously and paradoxically pre- scribed limits to their upward social mobility.

KEYWORDS:

• Hustling economies
• township tourism
• youth livelihoods
• Johannesburg

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Middle-class families endow their children with the languages, tools like books and personal availability that make the acquisition of school knowledge, a form of cultural capital, more expedient and less time-consuming.

2. Tsogo Sun is a South African hotel group.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adam Cooper

Adam Cooper works in the Education and Livelihoods theme of the Inclusive Economic Development division of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa. His work is at the intersection of the sociologies of youth and education, looking at how young people navigate various social challenges shaped by race, class, gender, age, language and spatial relations, amongst others, to create opportunities for themselves and others. He is a co-editor of the Oxford University Press Handbook of Global South Youth Studies.