Language and identity negotiations: an analysis of the experiences of Zimbabwean migrants in Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract

This article focuses on Ndebele and Shona-speaking Zimbabwean migrants in Johannesburg, noting how their language varieties constitute capital (‘entry fees’) in negotiating their constructions by others as outsiders. Theoretically, the article draws on diverse theoretical works on situated discourse, with Bourdieu's economy of social practices being the spinal anchor. In examining the role and value of language as entry fees in the situatedness of Zimbabweans in Johannesburg, I deploy a multi-sited ethnography across three neighbourhoods of Johannesburg. The central argument I make in this article is that language's value neither inheres in language itself nor is it static. Instead, the value shifts according to the specific and contextual power dynamics underlying the interface and evaluation of it as an entry fee. Consequently, this fluctuation produces a complex continuum of Otherness in which the experience of being Ndebele and Shona-speaking in Johannesburg is not homogenous, but takes on shifting meanings.