Mission to live: A gendered perspective on the experience of migration in Southern Africa

Buhle Mpofu

doi:10.4102/hts.v77i2.6513

Abstract

Extensive work has been carried out on gender and social transformation but there is a need for more work between these intersecting trajectories and their implications for Christian mission. Drawing on data collected from one of the migrants this current study employs the postcolonial lens to analyse interview responses on a migration experience of a young female migrant in South Africa and highlights survival strategies for young migrants by demonstrating that the impact of changing global socio-economic landscapes and poverty on migrant communities presents opportunity to explore alternative missional paradigms and theologies that address conditions of deprivation. As a contribution to United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals, this study also highlights how some migrant women use situations of deprivation to promote socio-economic transformation through radical doctrines of resistance. Interrogating key themes that emerged from the interview (2) alongside Dolores William’s doctrines of resistance demonstrates how one adolescent migrant embodies the radical doctrine of hope as lived reality expressed through a resilient theology of survival, which is sustained by developing and adapting to new lifestyles through cultural capital, skills, competency, new personal qualities, fashion and language or accents as means for survival strategies in the face of hostility.Contribution: By reflecting on the complex and gendered survival strategies for migrant women in religious communities, this article represents a systematic and practical reflection within a paradigm in which the intersection of Philosophy, Religious Studies, Social Sciences, Humanities and Natural Sciences generates an interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and trans disciplinary contested discourse.

Highlights

It is important to state from the onset that data analysed in this contribution are not a representative sample for all young women migrants but present an opportunity for alternative narratives in gendered migration discourses, and this example should not be treated as a representative sample in any way
Unlike Tambu, Ruth does not have to go to a mission school to overcome her struggles, she draws from her very struggles for survival and coping strategies, which emerge as doctrines of resistance, as we demonstrate in the following (Ruth, Interview Transcript, 2015):
Not a representative sample of migrant experience, this analysis highlighted how some migrant women use situations of deprivation to promote socio-economic transformation through resistance, whichembodies radical hope as lived reality expressed through her body and it requires a theology not just of solidarity and mobilisation of migrants, but a theology of care and sustenance for the migrant body in everyday life

Summary

Introduction

It is important to state from the onset that data analysed in this contribution are not a representative sample for all young women migrants but present an opportunity for alternative narratives in gendered migration discourses, and this example should not be treated as a representative sample in any way. In one of my recent publications I employed a case study (Mpofu 2020c) to demonstrate the impact of changing cultural landscapes for migrant adolescents’ identity as reflected on their agency in navigating new cultural contexts by developing and adapting to new lifestyles through components of cultural capital, namely, skills, competency, new personal qualities, fashion, hairstyling practices, language/accents as means for survival strategies and exploring host communities Ruth resembled these qualities and contrary to her warmly experiences within the church community [where she felt ‘at home’], Ruth explained how she has experienced hostility in her dealings with immigration officials [and the rest of intolerant South African communities]. Her radical exclamations demand that she should be recognised and counted amongst the living –amongst whom the Spirit of God dwells This profound sense of belonging demonstrates resistance, resilience and creativity in a struggle against regimes of migration, which frame African migrants as undesired beings who pose a threat to South African society and calls for prophetic Christian social practice within the context of migrant women’s experiences in South Africa. Whereas Williams identifies four forms of resistance – the art of encounter, the art of being cunning, the art of care and the art of connecting – Ruth displays embodied resistance, which emerges as an engendered theology of migration rooted in her creativity of asserting herself, refusing to be brainwashed and refusing to be determined by the circumstances around herself

Conclusion

Ethical considerations