'You can only claim your yard and not a country': exploring context, discourse and practices of cosmopolitanism amongst African migrants in Johannesburg

摘要

Adopting a social constructionist methodology, this research explores the contexts, discourse andudpractices of cosmopolitanism amongst African migrants in Johannesburg, South(ern) Africa’sudeconomic hub and top migrant destination. The research argues that the central function of thisudcosmopolitanism is to serve as a counter-narrative to an exclusive South African nationalism and asudan expression of a more general struggle to overcome the unwarranted limitations of being born in audcountry which does not provide enough opportunities. On the basis of both qualitative andudquantitative data collected between 2006 and 2008 in Johannesburg, this study challenges the stilludwidely held assumption that cosmopolitanism is not for those whose mobility is ‘unprivileged’ andudargues that this assumption becomes particularly unsustainable once situated in the contexts ofudAfrica’s unachieved nation-states, hyper-diverse urban centres and multiple alternative systems ofudbelonging and identity. Instead, this study argues that it is exactly these conditions that have actuallyudallowed a particular type of cosmopolitanism to emerge rather than having suppressed it. The threeudempirical chapters explore how migrants’ counter-narrative to discourses of nationalism, exclusionudand pathologisation of migration constructs notions of mobility and space in particularlyudcosmopolitan, de-territorialised terms; generates a concept of cultural diversity and the engagementudwith the Other as normal, enriching and unproblematic; and establishes a more inclusive andudmultifaceted cosmopolitan social order that is claimed to be morally superior to that of nationalism.udFinally, the conclusion provides some pointers towards three central imperatives for future researchudon cosmopolitanism: firstly, the imperative to address the present disconnect betweenudcosmopolitanism from above and from below – and as part of that the lack of attention to empiricaludforms of cosmopolitanism; secondly, the importance of paying more attention to the social, culturaludand economic contexts in which forms of empirical cosmopolitanism are embedded; and, thirdly, theudneed to overcome the three ‘isms’ that the majority of research on cosmopolitanism and migrationudremains stunted by: ethnocentrism, class-centrism and, somewhat ironically, methodologicaludnationalism. The study argues that if we want to know more about how individuals becomeudcosmopolitan agents of change and reformulate social orders ‘from below’, we should begin to treatudmigrant populations, and particularly those who move within and across the African continent, as audcrucial source of knowledge about how to negotiate both the uncertainties and the opportunities thatudare intrinsic to more de-territorialised, post-national forms of social organisation and identity.