1. Introduction: Gender and Mobility in Africa: Historical and contemporary perspectives:Reflections and Possibilities
2. Why were the Women left behind? Chinese and Indian Migration in the Indian Ocean Region: A Historical Perspective
3. The migration of women in Tunisia: between tradition and modernity
4. (Re-) negotiating gender identity among Zimbabwean female Pentecostal migrants in South Africa
5. The need of a dialogical approach to narrative research. The case of Somali migrant women living in Johannesburg
6. Migration, mobilities and families: comparative views among Congolese, Burundian and Zimbabwean female refugees
7. Negotiating Culture and Responses to Domestic Violence in South Africa: Migrant Women and Service Providers’ Narratives
8. “Who I am depends on who I am talking to”
9. Between Prosecutors and Counselors: State and Non-State Actors in the Rehabilitation of Victims of Human Trafficking in Nigeria
10. Crossing borders, present futures: A study of the life histories of pakistani immigrants in Durban
11. Migration of Senegalese women to Morocco: what do we learn from a gender perspective?
12. Mobile Women: negotiating gendered social norms, stereotypes and relationships
13. Social Control in Transnational Families: Somali Women and Dignity in Johannesburg
14. Voices on Mothering in the Margins: African Women in Europe online space in focus?
15. Cross-border networking and identity integration: exploring the experiences of Nigerian women immigrants in Cote d’Ivoire
16. Conclusion
Kalpana Hiralal is Associate Professor of History at the University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.
Zaheera Jinnah is an anthropologist and researcher at the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of the Witwaterstrand, Johannesburg, Africa, and Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Refugee Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada.
This volume examines gender and mobility in Africa though the central themes of borders, bodies and identity. It explores perceptions and engagements around ‘borders’; the ways in which ‘bodies’ and women’s bodies in particular, shape and are affected by mobility, and the making and reproduction of actual and perceived ‘boundaries’; in relation to gender norms and gendered identify. Over fourteen original chapters it makes revealing contributions to the field of migration and gender studies. Combining historical and contemporary perspectives on mobility in Africa, this project contextualises migration within a broad historical framework, creating a conceptual and narrative framework that resists post-colonial boundaries of thought on the subject matter. This multidisciplinary work uses divergent methodologies including ethnography, archival data collection, life histories and narratives and multi-country survey level data and engages with a range of conceptual frameworks to examine the complex forms and outcomes of mobility on the continent today. Contributions include a range of case studies from across the continent, which relate either conceptually or methodologically to the central question of gender identity and relations within migratory frameworks in Africa. This book will appeal to researchers and scholars of politics, history, anthropology, sociology and international relations.