- Title
- Cross-Border Migration, Social Cohesion and African Continental Integration: Perspectives of African Immigrants and South African Nationals in Gauteng, South Africa
- Creator
- Maseng, Jonathan Oshupeng
- Subject
- Migration -- Africa Emigration and immigration Social integration
- Date
- 2018
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Doctoral
- Type
- PhD(Sociology)
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10353/8855
- Identifier
- vital:33673
- Description
- Using the Sunnyside suburb of South Africa’s capital city of Pretoria as a case study, this study sought to gather, analyse and engage the perspectives, narratives and idealisations of African migrants and South African nationals in Gauteng province on cross-border migration, social cohesion and African continental integration. The goal was to interrogate the dominant discourse and assumption in migration scholarship that contact between nationals and immigrants is inherently conflict-inducing. The study adopted a qualitative methodology, with in-depth interviews, “street ethnography”, expert interviews and document analysis as the main sources of primary data. Overall, 85 in-depth interviews were conducted with immigrants and nationals of different occupational, gender and class backgrounds. The study found, among other things, that while many respondents expressed negative sentiments with regard to how cross-border migration affected their experience of social cohesion and idealisations about African continental integration, the relations between African immigrants and South African nationals in the study area were overwhelmingly congenial. This was even when there was no policy-oriented action by government to promote these positive relations. Respondents attributed this congeniality to, among other things, the fact that most small immigrant businesses depended on a predominantly South African clientele, while South African nationals in the study area saw such businesses as filling a crucial gap in their immediate socio-economic environments. Importantly, service provider-client relations served as “enhancers” of social cohesion in the study area. On the other hand, the relative dominance of immigrants in the small business sector in the study area served as a “threat” to social cohesion. From these findings, the study concluded that, contact between immigrants and nationals was not necessarily inherently conflict-inducing, and that social cohesion also rested on the logic of mutual dependence.
- Format
- 334 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- University of Fort Hare
- Publisher
- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
- Language
- English
- Rights
- University of Fort Hare
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UFH Department of Sociology and Anthropology
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details | SOURCE1 | 2018.Apr.JO MASENG.PhD Thesis E-Copy.pdf | 4 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details |