Abstract
Feminisation of migration has become a common subject in migration studies over the years, and so are studies into gendered journeys of migrants. However, existing studies do not give a well-rounded picture of women’s migration experiences. A holistic mapping of women’s migration, focusing on pre-migration, migration and post-migration experiences, remains limited. Existing scholarship tends to focus on one or two aspects of the migration process, but not all three aspects at the same time, thereby presenting what seems to be a fragmented narrative. Based on a case study of Zimbabwean migrant women working in the restaurant sector in Johannesburg, this thesis presents a holistic focus on migration. At the centre of the analysis are three broad migration constructs – pre-migration, migration, and post migration. The dissertation situates gender as a central organising axis of power, in a context where migrant women generally do not have resources or support from organisations. Presented through a feminist lens, the thesis critically engages the precarious resistance of migrant women as individuals and as a collective.
The thesis, which deploys qualitative methods, adopts precarious resistance as its conceptual framework. Precarious resistance is analytically useful because it captures a holistic migration experience, from the decision to migrate to living in Johannesburg. Precarious resistance as a conceptual framework was useful in explaining the various forms of precarious working and living conditions of migrant women. Findings of this study may be categorised into three broad categories: survival skills, transferable skill and political skills. These three categories apply across the three migration moments. While the research found themes that are consistent with existing literature, the study equally made pioneering findings across all moments. The research captures some of the most cutting-edge forms of resistance. The new findings made by the research deconstruct the narrative that migration is a spontaneous and unplanned process and that migrant women are without agency. The study found that migrant women are agentic beings within the migration process who exercise precarious resistance strategies to defeat, elude, evade, deceive, dodge, bypass, circumvent, acculturate to assimilate in, and adapt to the system.