African immigrants in contemporary South Africa can be perceived as a problem – the threatening other. Based on a case study of the Johannesburg inner city, this thesis aims to deconstruct this notion. It does so by investigating the nature and types and contribution of African immigrant traders` businesses to the Johannesburg inner city. In deconstructing the perception that African immigrants are the threatening other, and being infinitely aware that perception issues and the experiential realities hospitable to its centred on the human subject, this case study adopted a humanist geographic and critical realist approach by deploying a qualitative in-depth interview technique of both African immigrant and South African traders. This thesis suggests three important outcomes. The first is that: to view all African immigrants as the threatening other is too simplistic an assessment of an otherwise complex and dynamic set of relationships and interrelationships amongst and between African immigrant and South African traders. Second, some African immigrant traders do make a meaningful contribution to the Johannesburg inner city, whereas others do not. Third, the activities of African immigrant traders that may be considered as a threat by a section of the population are treated as a benefit by another. These nuanced insights and findings in this study not only render any analysis that projects all African immigrants negatively as an incomplete appraisal, but also suggest that it can never be correct to view them as such without capturing the dynamics that this work suggests. Such a finding not only challenges distorted and partial reporting by the media and also questions policies, which may be built on the wrong assumption that all African immigrants are a problem, but also extends the study of migration related issues in a South African context. / Geography / D. Litt. et. Phil. (Geography)

Cette thèse, située dans le contexte post-Colonial au Japon, s’articule autour d’un concept crée par Yang Seog-Il, écrivain contemporain zainichi : le « corps asiatique ». Après avoir circonscrit le champ d’analyse couvert par ce terme, notre étude formule la problématique suivante : par quels moyens ce « corps asiatique » s’affronte, dans la littérature de Yang -Dite zainichi-, au dépassement de l’ère coloniale et post-Coloniale au Japon ? Au cours de cette étude, nous recourrons à l’intertexte de la littérature maghrébine d’expression française (de Azouz Begag en particulier) lu comme dans un miroir. La première partie cartographie les contextes socio-Historiques de ces deux populations diasporiques, formées de décolonisés -Zainichi au Japon et Français issus de l’immigration maghrébine en France- apparues au siècle dernier, ainsi que le processus de formation des catégories littéraires associées à ces populations. Ensuite, nous entrons dans la profondeur du corpus, en abordant la manifestation de la subjectivité des (ex-) colonisés en tant que corps asiatique, à l’aide de l’épistémologie de Mikhaïl Bakhtine. La troisième partie enfin, est consacrée à une nouvelle lecture de ces œuvres, en établissant un lien entre le thème littéraire du parricide et le « corps asiatique ». Fils du Japon post-Colonial, Yang Seog-Il désire éliminer et dépasser un père tant filial que symbolique. Cependant, sa tentative de dépassement qui se veut passer par la féminisation de ce « corps asiatique » nous invite à effectuer une ultime lecture sous l’angle de la critique féministe post-Coloniale, pour en dévoiler les restes de rapports de domination. / In the context of post-Colonial Japan this dissertation attaches itself to explore the concept of a contemporary writer, a so-Called Zainichi: Yang Seog-Il’s “Asiatic body”. Having defined the field of interpretations covered by this term, our central question will be: in Yang Seog-Il’s literature how is the “Asiatic body” engaged in a process of overcoming this colonial and post-Colonial era? While reading Yang’s works, we shall use as an intertext and a mirror, some literary cases of contemporary francophone North African descendant writers (especially Azouz Begag’s texts). The first part shall map the socio-Historical context of these two diasporic populations (the Decolonized Zainichi in Japan and the Descendant from North African immigrants in France), that appeared in the last century, and in the same time, the birth of their so-Called post-Colonial literature. In the second part, we intend to make an in-Depth interpretation of our corpus, in taking up the manifestation of subjectivity of the (ex) colonized as the “Asiatic body”, using the Mikhaïl Bakhtine’s epistemology. The third part at last is devoted to a new reading of the literary works we are interested in: by establishing a link between the parricide as a literary theme and the “Asiatic body”, the wish of the son of post-Colonial Japan, Yang Seog-Il, to eliminate the father appears to renegotiate symbolical aspects that must be analysed. Hence, the feminization of the “Asiatic body” undertaken by Yang has to be read under the light of a feminist post-Colonial criticism that might uncover new themes of domination.