Rural and gated: narratives of lifestyle migration to Grotto Bay private residential Estate, South Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper sought to explore a connection between lifestyle migration and the emergence of gated communities in rural South Africa by examining the motivations of its participants to move to a rural gated estate. In aiming to understand the ongoing structuring and restructuring of post-apartheid residential spaces, motivations to migrate were analyzed with particular reference to discourses of exclusion and their relationship to race. Findings showed that the reasons for migration resonated with much of the research around gated communities in the local context, and confirmed that the search for a particular lifestyle associated with the rural idyll is not only fuelled by cultural preferences or anti-urban feelings but also by the need to escape certain anxieties experienced by white South Africans following the demise of the social imaginary of apartheid.