This thesis examined how the perceptions of South Africans of Indian descent as foreign, by fellow South African citizens, have changed or the extent to which they have remained the same from the time of the first arrival of indentured labourers from India in 1860 to the present. In so doing the study also revealed how those classified as ‘Indian’ in South Africa have constructed their identities in relation to, and because of, differing social, political and economic contexts. In order to achieve the aims of this research, the study was periodised based on the key political transitions over the last 150 years. As a result, the constructions and perceptions of ‘Indians’ by others were explored from the period of indenture under colonialism (1860-1910), through to the formation of Union (1910-1948), into apartheid (1948-1994) and ultimately through to democracy (1994-present). The data collection methods included documentary sources, oral histories, and semi-structured interviews. The main documentary sources collected included articles from The Mercury and Ilanga newspapers, spanning 150 years but taken from the key periods as discussed above. In addition it was deemed equally important to conduct in-depth interviews with South African families of Indian descent. The trajectories of five such families, and of the individuals within these family units, were explored, covering the period from the arrival of the first immigrant from India to South Africa, to the present day. The findings reveal that the perceptions of ‘Indians’ as foreign have endured more than it has altered in the psyche of fellow South Africans through each of the political dispensations and because the dominant racial discourse has persisted throughout the various periods albeit through varying mechanisms and diverse narratives justifying it at different times. Although democracy brought with it hope for a more inclusive South Africa with the African National Congress-dominated parliament adopting a constitution based on shared citizenship, the basis of the policies that followed however represent the antithesis of inclusion by entrenching existing notions of difference through the perpetuation of ‘race’ categories that were previously reproduced and legitimised by the repealed apartheid-era Population Registration Act. Blatant xenophobic discourse against South Africans of Indian descent are indeed still apparent, with the latest expressions centering around notions of autochthony which imply that ‘Indians’ are not indigenes of South Africa and hence should have no claim to its resources. / Ph.D. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2014.

This thesis examines indentured and apprenticed labor in Cape Town between the years 1808 and 1840. Through analysis of primary material such as the South African Commercial Advertiser, the Colonist, and the Mediator, as well as contemporary travel accounts, contracts of indenture and apprenticeship, and an examination of the records of the Cape Town Magistrates, this study explores the attitudes and perceptions towards indentured and apprenticed labor by both employers and indentured and apprenticed servants.This study hopes to add to the existing literature pertaining to nineteenth-century Cape Colony labor. This thesis commences with an examination of the different indenture and apprenticeship systems which existed in Cape Town between the years 1808 and 1840. It explores the issue of how employers and the government sought to maintain a constant supply of labor in the city as the prominence of urban slavery declined. It also discusses the important issue of how employers defined the terms apprentice and indenture. Chapter two explores the topic of child apprenticeship in Cape Town between the years 1812 to 1840, and illustrates that the notion of child apprenticeship was understood in different ways between employers and parents of apprenticed children. Chapter three investigates the stereotypes Cape Town's English speaking employers held towards the city's indentured and apprenticed laborers. The final chapter explores the question of status and incorporation into Cape Town society for the city's indentured and apprenticed laborers, and demonstrates that laborers did not enjoy equal status to the city's slaves.

Human trafficking and slavery are horrific crimes that require strict penalties for perpetrators and effective protections for survivors, but these crimes are in part facilitated by a system of laws and norms that effectively marginalize certain populations--the "unskilled" migrant. In this thesis I aim to reexamine and reinterpret the problem of human trafficking and slavery in a way that highlights the background conditions to the problem. I argue that the framework used as a conceptual foundation for addressing the problem limits the scope of responsibility. Specifically, the framework fails to acknowledge structural contributing factors I show to be relevant: law, policy, and norms impacting immigration and migrant labor. I assert that the limited scope of responsibility, which focuses heavily on direct perpetrators of the crime, leaves largely unexamined the role of social-structural processes in contributing to the problem. I use the United States as a case study in order to provide a targeted analysis of social-structural processes that contribute to the problem. In this examination of the United States, I focus on agricultural and domestic slavery. In conclusion, I attempt to build a new conceptual framework that calls attention to social-structural processes and includes this understanding in assigning responsibility for the problem. I assert that anti-trafficking efforts must account for the role of social-structural processes and that these contributing factors must be adequately addressed and incorporated into the framework for prevention.

This study is a gendered historical analysis of the legal administration of Indian Immigrants in British Colonial Natal in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By focusing primarily on the attempts of the Natal Government to intervene in the personal law of especially indentured and ex-indentured Indians, this thesis presents an analysis of the role that gender played in the conceptualization and promulgation of the indentured labour scheme in Natal, and in the subsequent regulation of the lives of Indian immigrants in the Colony. It traces the developments in the administration of Indian women, especially, from the beginning of the indenture system in colonial Natal until the passage of the Indian Marriages Bill of 1907 and attempts to contextualize arguments around these themes within broader colonial discourses and debates, as well as to examine the particularity of such administrative attempts in the Natal context. This study observes the changing nature of 'custom' amongst Indian immigrants and the often simultaneous and contradictory attempts of the Natal colonial administration to at first support, and later, to intervene in what constituted the realm of the customary. Through an analysis of legal administration at different levels of government, this analysis considers the interactions of gender and utilitarian legal discourse under colonialism and, in particular, the complex role of Indian personal law and the ordinary civil laws of the Colony of Natal in both restricting and facilitating the mobility of Indian women brought to Natal under the auspices of the indentured labour system. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2005.

No abstract available. / M.A. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2014.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of English Language and Literature, August 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.