Bodies across borders : embodiment and experiences of migration for southern African international students at the University of Cape Town

In context of increasing global migration and its correlation to heightened tensions around the meaning of a "foreign" body, this research questions the experiences of bodies crossing borders into the social and historical space of Cape Town, South Africa. Grounded in theories of surveillance, embodiment, and feminist geography of fear of crime, the study employed a feminist methodology using qualitative group interviews with international students from the Southern African Development Community at the University of Cape Town. The transcribed data was analysed through the participants' use of discourses and their descriptions of experiences. Questions arose around the meaning of surveillance and notions of respectability in transition. Furthermore, participants navigate amid new spaces of fear and insecurity in relation to their subjectivities, particularly as "foreigners". The research suggests that fear becomes a fundamental attribute of bodies in migration through which individuals mitigate through "passing" subverting expressions of embodied nationalities, knowledge gathering of the local terrain, among others. The challenges and techniques to overcome these fears become part of a process to re-establish the "self" in a foreign context.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Gender Studies

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Moll, Tessa

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Bennett, Jane

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/14597

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/14597