Abstract
Although migrant masculinities exhibit diverse forms of solidarities in host countries,
existing masculinity-migration studies have not duly accounted for how their exercise
of agency associated with the construction of masculine respectability results in
migrant-migrant contestations among them. This study fills in this gap by
interrogating the masculine relationships among African men in Johannesburg.
Employing qualitative in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, data was
collected from 20 young, male migrants from four African countries - Ghana, Nigeria,
the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia – across 4 informal business sites in
Johannesburg over a period of 6 months. This information was subsequently
thematically analysed using Creswell’s (2009) six-step data analysis approach.
Findings reveal that in their articulations of masculine respectability, the migrant men
create and co-create each other in the social fields that they inhabit through
gendered agency. Sometimes such enactments of masculinity are material they
construct and reconstruct themselves materially, for instance, as providers and
heads of households. At other times, the men turn to other social means to construct
self-esteem, including employing past and present cultural and symbolic social
resources like educational attainment, age, legal status in South Africa, etc. In the
relational contexts that the bodies of the men interact, they mobilise individual and
collective agencies to forge useful relationships and solidarities. Yet, these are
mostly instrumental in nature thus tend to be frequently disrupted by individual and
group senses of respectability that result in tensions among them. The manifest
outcomes include verbal and physical contestations and co-constructions, which
sometimes are also violent in nature. These, then, lead the men to make calculated
decisions to engage minimally with each other while maintaining strategic
solidarities.
The thesis adds a significant voice to studies on migrant masculinities by
interrogating the complex realities and relationships that migrant men are embedded
in within host contexts. Ultimately, it presents a critical perspective of masculinitymigration
literature that is largely fixated on xenophobia discourses, which tend to
locate migrant men as victims during the migratory process.
D.Litt. et Phil. (Sociology)