Patients and Personhood: Perceptions of HIV in Mozambican Immigrants in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Foreign-born immigrants residing in South Africa largely come from sub-Saharan countries with the highest HIV prevalence rates worldwide. These migrants may manage HIV medically, despite precarious conditions, but little is known about how they manage socially in shifting cultural and clinical landscapes. In this article, I explore the complexities of stigma by juxtaposing perceptions of illness between HIV-positive Mozambican migrants in care and members of their communities unware of their own serostatus. I argue that stigma is tied to location through social networks. Sharp perceptual contrasts between patients and community members result in equally contrasting social positionalities and othering in sprawling migrant communities, where secrecy and gossip become strategies of social survival. Due to its social lethality, stigma continues to cause distress.

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KEYWORDS:

• South Africa
• HIV/AIDS
• migrants
• Mozambique
• stigma

Acknowledgments

I am immensely grateful to Prof. Lenore Manderson for all her help and advice and to colleagues at Wits' School of Public Health and the African Center for Migration and Society. I thank Dr. Sello Mashamaite and Right to Care for opening the doors to Themba Lethu Clinic and Ms. Erma Cossa for painstaking research assistance. Research Ethics Committees of the University of the Witwatersrand granted ethical clearances (Medical and Human; no. M150496 and H16/02/30).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program under grant agreement no. 600207.

Notes on contributors

Bent Steenberg

Bent Steenberg is a medical anthropologist affiliated to the University of the Witwatersrand, who studies African immigration and social and political aspects of HIV care. He has undertaken extensive fieldwork in HIV clinics and hospitals in Mozambique and South Africa. Correspondence may be directed to Dr. Bent Steenberg, PhD, School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand, 27 St Andrews Road, Parktown 2193, Johannesburg, SA. E-mail: [email protected].