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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
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| Title: | Living within and beyond Johannesburg: exclusion, religion, and emerging forms of being |
| Author: | Landau, Loren B. |
| Year: | 2009 |
| Periodical: | African Studies |
| Volume: | 68 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 197-214 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | migrants social integration urban society religion |
| External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/00020180903109581 |
| Abstract: | Drawing on original survey data and interviews, this article explores forms of exclusion, solidarity, and mutual recognition taking shape in Johannesburg (South Africa) among the city's new arrivals and long-term residents. It begins by highlighting three aspects of migrant life in central Johannesburg that situate affiliations with religion, kin, and space. The first is the relative absence of a self-defined and dominant host community; the second is the presence of a virulent and often violent nativism; and lastly, the strategies of recent arrivals to be both part of and apart from the city. In exploring these elements, the article suggests that religion is one of a number of strategies for negotiating inclusion and belonging while transcending ethnic, national and transnational paradigms. Central to these ambitions is ensuring partial inclusion in a transforming society without becoming bounded by it. Rather than reiterating a coherent or consistent philosophy, these are syncretic and ever-evolving amalgams of rhetorical and organizational tools drawing on a diversity of more established discourses and value systems. Through these articulations, migrants are inventing a new language of belonging that may generate unexpected, unpredictable, yet lasting categories of collective membership. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |
