Practice of Citizenship: Mozambican Immigration within the City of Johannesburg

Abstract

With the end of the apartheid regime, and despite the strict immigration policies introduced since 1994, the number of foreign workers in Johannesburg has increased and now constitutes about 7 per cent of the city's population. This paper examines the relationship between migration and urban belonging and inclusion for Mozambican migrants in post-apartheid Johannesburg. If “citizenship is a historical process that exists at any time and place, constituted by strategies and technologies as ways of being political” (Isin, Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002: 49), the aim of this study is to delve into the historical construction of this process, questioning the notion of ‘citizenship’ in post-apartheid Johannesburg. In particular, the practices that migrants put in place to gain access to the city are examined. This research is based on interviews conducted in 2009 with Mozambican migrants, and local actors working in the field of migration. Without citizenship, both in theory and practice, migrants in Johannesburg are forced to live detached from the State, seeking invisibility from society and within public space in order to cope with the constant threat of deportation.