The role of social networks in alleviating precarity: the case of undocumented Zimbabwean migrants working in the private security industry in Johannesburg, South Africa
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Date
2019
Authors
Singh, Reshmi
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Abstract
Globalization is a new age phenomenon and nations need to establish new ways of dealing
with the mass migration of people in search of livelihoods. This study, conducted in July 2017,
aims to highlight the agency involved in the search for jobs in the private security industry
(PSI) in Johannesburg, South Africa. It explains why undocumented Zimbabweans are
favoured as employees instead of locals. In so doing, this study addresses and exposes the
oppression of undocumented Zimbabwean migrants and demonstrates how they in turn
reduce the effects of their precarity by exercising agency through utilising social networks to
overcome the invisible effects of structure imposed through the economic policy of free
markets and free trade.
This study illustrates the modern-day paradigm of the desperation faced in neoliberalism, and
how globalisation, a product of neoliberalism, perpetuates precarity, thereby encouraging the
mass movement of people in order to seek employment. This simultaneously creates a
precarity of location. Oppression results from the displacement and the economic precarity
experienced. Owing to the limited alternatives or choices that migrants are faced with, the
potential for oppression does not pose a deterrent in the decision to migrate. This study finds
that foreigners, especially undocumented foreigners, are etherised. This study reveals the
dimension of intersectionality in the lives of these migrants and how their subjectivities are
perpetuated. Furthermore, it highlights the reality of the plight of those who risk their lives
and wellbeing to protect strangers and how remittances play a key role in the decision to
migrate. A central theme deduced from this research exposes how neoliberalism has
exacerbated the precarity whilst concurrently tainting the essence of agency.
It is also observes that choices which are made, are inauthentic by even submitting to
oppression as a choice; tolerating xenophobia and succumbing to exploitation. In this study,
I have highlighted three core themes in the Theoretical Framework, namely precarity, agency
and oppression. The latter two juxtaposed concepts carry very different definitions, since the
former enables and the latter disables. In this particular study, however, these two concepts
explain the "lived realities" of undocumented migrants working in the PSI in Johannesburg.
The participants in this study reveal how they are exploited, the manner in which they
experience xenophobia and powerlessness, and how social networks are used to overcome
some of these forms of oppression but also how it facilitates migration. In addition, precarity
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has also created conditions that perpetuate insecurities, hence migrants resort to life-and death choices in order to remit and provide for their families. I am surprised by the sense of
accountability and responsibility that the migrants exercise through the migration process, in
spite of all the parameters that constrain their assimilation into their country of destination.
This study dwells deep into the migration of these individuals; the difficulty they endure and
provides a perspective which detracts from the image that foreigners come to South Africa to
"take our jobs and steal".
Description
A research report submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of Master in Critical Diversity
Studies to the Faculty of Humanities, School of Social Sciences, University of the
Witwatersrand, 2019