Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Strategy and tactics: Chinese immigrants and diasporic spaces in Johannesburg, South Africa |
Authors: | Harrison, Philip Moyo, Khangelani Yang, Yan |
Year: | 2012 |
Periodical: | Journal of Southern African Studies (ISSN 1465-3893) |
Volume: | 38 |
Issue: | 4 |
Pages: | 899-925 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | immigrants Chinese diasporas settlement patterns urban society |
External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2012.741013 |
Abstract: | Migration studies in South Africa have partially taken the spatial turn, giving some attention to questions of territoriality and spatial relationships. Recent literature has drawn on V.M. de Certeau's distinction between the strategies of the powerful and the tactics of the subordinate, revealing for example how migrants occupy hidden spaces to evade control and social hostility. Within the broad aegis of de Certeau's work, the authors engage the historical and contemporary spaces of the Chinese diaspora in Johannesburg. They describe a highly differentiated grouping of migrants that has deployed, and continues to deploy, varying tactics over time and across space. There are, for example, processes of clustering and processes of dispersal. There is also the use of visibility and cultural marking as a spatial tactic, as well as of invisibility and hidden spaces. The authors also reveal that the spatial practices of the Chinese migrants do not only relate to the strategies of the powerful but are also a response to the competition and threats posed by other subordinate individuals and groupings in society, including other Chinese migrants. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |