This study looks at the importance of social networks amongst urban migrants in Johannesburg. The aim of the study was to look at how the social networks of international migrants function, and how migrants make use of these networks in an urban setting; examining whether this differs between migrants with established social networks available at their final destination before departure, and migrants without such social networks, and if so, how it differs. The study looks at the importance of social networks throughout the entire migration process, more specifically investigating their impact on the decision-making, journey, arrival and adaptation conditions. The literature review highlights research within the areas of social capital and social networks, research which was used to develop the definition of social networks used in this thesis. The literature review further shows that most research on the subject has emphasised the advantages of having friends or family available at the country of destination. This chapter also establishes a set of important indicators which formed the framework of areas which needed to be included in the analysis of adaptation. In order to analyse the importance of social networks, a mixed methods approach was adopted. This approach allowed the quantitative section to establish particular relationships between variables, while the qualitative section explained these relationships further. The comprehensive quantitative data which was used came from the African Cities Project (ACP) which was a comparative and longitudinal survey conducted in 2008. To further explore the findings from this data, a case study was conducted using in-depth interviews with the most interesting migrant group identified in the ACP data; the Somalis. The decision to select the Somalis as the subject of the qualitative case study was based on the findings of the quantitative analysis, and in particular the fact that the Somali respondents in many ways contradicted much of the previous literature on social networks. The findings of this thesis suggest that the significance of social networks during the migration process has often been exaggerated in the literature. According to the data used in this study, migrants without social networks tend to be more successful in many areas, especially when it comes to adapting to the new country. Having personal networks at the country of destination before departure seems to be less important than the cultural knowledge needed to find and make use of the networks and assistance available.

This thesis is about a specific locality- the Central Methodist Church- and it details the lives and experiences of a large group of migrants who lived within this locality. The study also examines the activities of a wide range of humanitarian organisations that instituted interventions at the church and analyses how individuals’ suffering is dealt with by humanitarian organizations. The individuals who inhabited the church were a product of large-scale structural factors- political conflict, economic decline and fragmentation and social despair. These individuals were however following traditional mobile livelihoods routes that have been part and parcel of the Southern African labour migration history. The central questions that this study examines are how and in what ways experiential suffering is dealt with and how the different ways and technologies of managing suffering, impinge upon individual and collective subjectivities in the specific locality of the church. In addition the study examines the categorizations and representations of indigent Zimbabwean migrants within South Africa and how these representations have been constructed and transformed over time. The findings made in the study are drawn from a year of ethnographic fieldwork, which combined a number of different methods. These included archival research, participant observation, in-depth interviews and narratives with individual migrants, state officials and officials from humanitarian organizations. The study also made use of diaries in order to detail the everyday lives of individual migrants and capture the texture of everyday life at the church. The findings indicate that the migrants emplaced within the Central Methodist Church were not only victims of structural, political and socio-economic factors as has been the common refrain in recent literature but were also victims of the ‘invisible’, silenced, unrecognized and unacknowledged violence and exclusionary nation-building mechanisms and processes in post-independence Zimbabwe and post-apartheid South Africa. The study finds that the ways through which organizations deal with suffering is mediated by numerous factors and humanitarian interventions interact and articulate with the aspirations of individuals in complex and unpredictable ways often with perverse outcomes. One of the key findings that emerges from the study carried out within a specific locality challenges the notion of places such as refugee camps and asylum holding centres as being ‘exceptional spaces’ where individuals are bereft of rights and even their sense of individuality and worth. Rather such places ought to be understood in terms of contextual, material and historical realities. These places ought also to be understood in terms of the meanings that are attached to them by those who inhabit them. In this regard the study shows the Central Methodist church building to be a material and political resource used by the inhabitants and it’s also an economic and political resource utilized by NGOs and other actors. The thesis shows that the ways through which humanitarian interventions are deployed leads to the creation of categories of victimhood and oftentimes these categories are negotiated and constantly reconfigured at times without necessarily interacting with the realities of the beneficiaries in the manner intended. The thesis shows that the everyday lives of indigent individuals are characterized not only by hardships but the manner in which these individuals attempt to assist each are processes fraught with tension and ambiguity. By so doing, the study challenges the romanticization of the lives of the poor which is often depicted as resilient and where the poor assist each other. The thesis makes a contribution to the anthropology of humanitarianism. In addition, the thesis contributes to broader debates on the intersections between migration, indigence, victimhood and the logics and practices of humanitarian institutions.

Cette thèse se propose d'étudier les effets d'une politique scolaire spécifique destinée aux enfants de travailleurs migrants ruraux - les « enfants de nongmingong » - faisant l'objet d'une catégorisation et d'une sectorisation dans des écoles spécifiques à cause du système d'enregistrement de la résidence (hukou) en Chine au niveau local. Le « problème de l'éducation des enfants de nongmingong» est en réalité le produit d'un processus d'objectivation de cette catégorie d'élèves, non seulement par la construction institutionnelle fondée sur une logique particulariste mais aussi par la légitimation savante des recherches académiques chinoises teintées d'une vision misérabiliste. Nous mettons les enfants au centre de la focale de recherche et tentons de cerner les effets de la ségrégation scolaire sur la construction de l'identité sociale des enfants et de leurs parents. Fondée sur une enquête ethnographique dans une école semi-privée destinée à l'accueil de ces enfants dans la ville de Hangzhou entre 2010 et 2012, cette recherche met au jour tant les modalités de la mise en oeuvre de la catégorie au sein de l'école par la direction et par les enseignants issus des classes moyennes urbaines, que les formes de résistance et de négociation ou de remise de soi des parents d'élèves face à l'institution scolaire. De même les enfants ne sont pas passifs face à ces injonctions et à ces processus d'imprégnation et d'inculcation d'éléments contradictoires (normes, valeurs, savoir-faire et savoir-être) par les univers familial et scolaire. Ils mettent en oeuvre différentes formes de conciliation pour se forger une identité personnelle. / This thesis aims to study the effects of a specific school policy for children of rural migrant workers - the « children of nongmingong » - subject to categorization and segmentation in a specific school because of registration system of the residence (hukou) in China. The « problem of the education of children nongmingong » is actually the product of a process of objectification of this category of students, not only by the institutional construction based on a particularistic logic but also by scholarly research Chinese academic tinged who legitimates the concept and provides a pessimistic vision.We put children at the center of the focus of research and we are trying to identify the effects of school segregation on the construction of the social identity of children and of their parents. Based on an ethnographic study in a semi-private school for children of nongmingong in Hangzhou City between 2010 and 2012, this research reveals both the modalities of implementation of the category within the school by management and by teachers from the urban middle classes, and the forms of resistance and negotiation of parents in front of the school system.Children are not passive in this process. They face these injunctions and adapt to this situation of impregnation and inculcation of conflicting elements (norms, values, knowledge and skills) of the family and school universe. They implement various forms of conciliation to form their own identity.