Abstract
Using quantitative data and ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Johannesburg and Maputo between 2005 and 2007, this article explores the meaning of city life for Southern Mozambican migrants in Johannesburg. First, I analyze the trajectories of migrants in Maputo and Johannesburg, before and after migration to South Africa. Second, I propose an explanation of the absence of political organization and the weakness of social links among Mozambican migrants, probably the major characteristic that distinguishes them from other African migrants in Johannesburg. Third, I focus on Mozambicans' everyday life in Johannesburg to illustrate the nature and extent of adaptation and transformation within the city. In focusing on differences linked to workplace and residence, I show how a foreigner moves from being a total outsider to becoming part of the metropolis by learning to cope with the city, establishing good relationships with his neighbors, and building a minimal level of trust with his work mates.
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Notes
This research project is part of the programme “Immigration, Transit and Urban Transformation: A Comparative Study of Post-Apartheid Migration and Urbanization in Lubumbashi, Maputo, and Johannesburg”, funded by the CEPED and coordinated by the French Institute of South Africa and the Forced Migration Studies Programme (University of Witwatersrand).
It is important to note that this shared ideal does not imply a common conception of masculinity and gender roles among these young men from Maputo. See Aboim (2006) for an analysis of masculinities in Maputo.
I refer here to legal forms of earning money, in the formal or the informal sector, and not to the criminal activities in which the Mozambicans are allegedly involved according the media. However, the analysts have frequently argued that the dearth of serious statistics makes it difficult to say whether foreigners are responsible for the majority of crimes. In the case of the recently arrived Mozambicans, it seems to me difficult to imagine them involved in organised or serious crimes, because of their absence of means (cars, guns, connections) and their lack of skills (language, ability to drive, knowledge of the city). But, this certainly deserves a more specific research.
For instance, there is nothing similar to the “daughter communities” between Mexican villages and American cities (Farret 2001).
In his historical research on the township gangs in Johannesburg, Clive Glaser (2000) mentions that the rural migrants were routinely mugged by gang members.
Young Mozambican migrants concentrate in a disco in Bertrams, but they are not the majority of those frequenting the place.
A woman of Phokeng (North West Province), interviewed in Alexandra, explains in these terms the brutal assault of her husband in 1941: “Instead of using the same way on his way back, he decided to take a different direction” (Bozzoli and Nkotsoe 1991: 154).
See also Duneier (1999) on this topic.
This ongoing process is also what leads me to a more optimistic view on migrations and migrants in Southern Africa than Ferguson's analysis on Zambian mine workers in the Copperbelt region since the mid-1970s (Ferguson 1999). Indeed, his excessive focus on the Manchester anthropologists' modernization narrative makes him neglect other ways to think about modernity in Africa. As tough and cruel as migrants' lives frequently are, they are not only a reflection of abject consequences of the new world order, but also the evidence of human agency and ability to face hard situations and adapt to new environments.
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Acknowledgment
I am grateful to Aurelia Wa Kabwe-Segatti and Loren Landau for their comments and corrections.
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Vidal, D. Living in, out of, and Between Two Cities: Migrants from Maputo in Johannesburg. Urban Forum 21, 55–68 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-010-9080-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-010-9080-y