"You can only claim your yard and not a country": exploring context, discourse and practices of cosmopolitanism amongst African migrants in Johannesburg
Year: 2010
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Adopting a social constructionist methodology, this research explores the contexts, discourse and \npractices of cosmopolitanism amongst African migrants in Johannesburg, South(ern) Africa’s \neconomic hub and top migrant destination. The research argues that the central function of this \ncosmopolitanism is to serve as a counter-narrative to an exclusive South African nationalism and as \nan expression of a more general struggle to overcome the unwarranted limitations of being born in a \ncountry which does not provide enough opportunities. On the basis of both qualitative and \nquantitative data collected between 2006 and 2008 in Johannesburg, this study challenges the still \nwidely held assumption that cosmopolitanism is not for those whose mobility is ‘unprivileged’ and \nargues that this assumption becomes particularly unsustainable once situated in the contexts of \nAfrica’s unachieved nation-states, hyper-diverse urban centres and multiple alternative systems of \nbelonging and identity. Instead, this study argues that it is exactly these conditions that have actually \nallowed a particular type of cosmopolitanism to emerge rather than having suppressed it. The three \nempirical chapters explore how migrants’ counter-narrative to discourses of nationalism, exclusion \nand pathologisation of migration constructs notions of mobility and space in particularly \ncosmopolitan, de-territorialised terms; generates a concept of cultural diversity and the engagement \nwith the Other as normal, enriching and unproblematic; and establishes a more inclusive and \nmultifaceted cosmopolitan social order that is claimed to be morally superior to that of nationalism. \nFinally, the conclusion provides some pointers towards three central imperatives for future research \non cosmopolitanism: firstly, the imperative to address the present disconnect between \ncosmopolitanism from above and from below – and as part of that the lack of attention to empirical \nforms of cosmopolitanism; secondly, the importance of paying more attention to the social, cultural \nand economic contexts in which forms of empirical cosmopolitanism are embedded; and, thirdly, the \nneed to overcome the three ‘isms’ that the majority of research on cosmopolitanism and migration \nremains stunted by: ethnocentrism, class-centrism and, somewhat ironically, methodological \nnationalism. The study argues that if we want to know more about how individuals become \ncosmopolitan agents of change and reformulate social orders ‘from below’, we should begin to treat \nmigrant populations, and particularly those who move within and across the African continent, as a \ncrucial source of knowledge about how to negotiate both the uncertainties and the opportunities that \nare intrinsic to more de-territorialised, post-national forms of social organisation and identity.
Author: Iriann Haupt
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2256855309