Anna Sango
John Muller Memorial Prize
awarded to the MSc Development Planning student who obtains the highest mark for the Research Report in the second year of study
Livelihoods at the Margins
A Case Study of Somali Women's Practices of Transnational Mobility and Livelihood Strategies in Mayfair, Johannesburg
Anna Sango (b. 1994) is a spatial practitioner and artist based in Johannesburg. She holds a Bachelor of Architectural Studies degree from the University of Cape Town, and completed her MSc in Development Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand. Feminist and queer methodologies and practices are central to her research practice. She is currently completing an MA in Film and Television, at the University of the Witwatersrand, with a research focus on black feminist geographies and experimental cinema.
In the African context, the increased feminisation of migration plays a significant role in shaping the livelihood strategies of individuals and communities by improving survival means, expanding opportunities, and maintaining and building social relations across various contexts (Nyamnjoh, 2006: 2; Kihato, 2013: 62). However, as argued by Kihato (2007), practices of cross-border mobility destabilise the legitimacy and authority of the modern nation-state, as well as notions of how we understand space. Due to colonial legacies and neoliberal practices, development planning theory and practice often fail to accommodate the socio-spatial strategies of marginal, mobile actors in African cities (Harrison, 2006).
This study explores the diversity and hybridity of urban practices in Johannesburg, shaped by migrant women’s practices of cross-border mobility through a feminist, ‘gendered geographies of power’ conceptual framework. This framework accounts for the ways in which intersecting, gendered power relations impact the agency of migrant women and shape transnational relationships, livelihoods and urbanisation.
The study centres the experiences and socio-economic roles of Somali women in the Somali community’s transnational social space, located in Mayfair, Johannesburg. It illustrates their practices of transnational mobility, which account for the transnational flows and social processes associated with mobility between nation-states; and it uncovers the ways in which livelihood practices are strategically shaped to accommodate these transnational ties.
By focusing on the extensive transnational environment in which Somali women’s livelihoods take shape, as well as their relationships at the scale of the household, we are met with the immense complexities that exist in maintaining transnational households, while navigating the gendered social expectations of the host community. These interactions significantly shape sets of hybrid socio-spatial relationships that are created in the wake of cross-border mobility, subverting hegemonic understandings of urban space and facilitating new ways of seeing and thinking about the African city.
2020 Prizewinning Projects Exhibition
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