Presentation given at Gendered dimensions of migration: Material and social outcomes of South-South migration. 30 June - 2 July 2015 at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore http://migratingoutofpoverty.dfid.gov.uk/research/womenandchildren/gendered_dimensions

1. Gendered Representations of
Zimbabwean Independent Young Female
Migrants Negotiating for Livelihood in a
South African Border Town.
Stanford T. Mahati
University of Cape Town, Centre for Social Science
Research
“Gendered Dimensions of Migration: Material and
social outcomes of South-South migration”
30 June 2015
National University of Singapore
Singapore

2. Introduction (1)
• I explore the gendered representations of Zimbabwean
independent young female migrants negotiating for livelihood
in a in a humanitarian crisis context through examining the
ways they were formally and informally represented by
humanitarian workers
• Formal discourse - what humanitarian workers said during
their formal interactions with young female independent
migrant children. I call it the formal discourse because this is
what they were officially expected to say, do, as well as what
is unwritten or written in the policies and mission statements
of their organisations and government
• The informal discourse - what aid workers said in informal
settings which coincides with or contradicts the formal
position of the organisation(s)

3. Introduction (2)
• Both the formal and informal discourses are contested, utilised by
different social actors and prevail at different moments
• Conflicting discourses: those that support girls’ migration and
those that oppose their participation in work upon migration (often
these contradictory positions are held by the same person)
• It is important to interrogate the gendered representations of
independent young female migrants and their consequences at
different moments and in resource-poor settings, where patriarchy
remains dominant, adults are not able to support children, and
there is enormous pressure for children to contribute to household
economies (Bourdillon, 2008b)
• Analysis sheds light on how aid workers understand migrant girls’
work

4. Research Methods and Theoretical
Frameworks
• To unpack the life-worlds of both migrant children and
humanitarian workers the ethnographic study draws centrally
on the New Social Studies of Childhood (see O’Kane,
2008) and the actor-oriented and interface approach
(Long, 2001; Long, 1992; Long 1990) as a theoretical as well
as a methodological approach

5. Study Site & Type of Work
• Conducted in Musina, Limpopo Province, South Africa
• From 2000 Musina has been hosting a big population of
foreign migrants including children from Zimbabwe
• Number of humanitarian agencies started operating and
offering services in the poor and violent border town
• Vendors, domestic workers, beggars, hair dressers

6. The Official Discourse: Anti-Child Work and Girls
Work Approach
• Tendency in ‘official’ humanitarian discourse to depict independent
migrant girls as vulnerable to abuse and exploitation at the
workplace
• Official understandings was influenced by global understandings
of childhood and the dominant discourse of the “girl-child being
more vulnerable” and therefore should be protected
• Drawing from the discourse of formal schooling as the ‘rightful’
activity for children including girls, aid workers officially sought to
keep children on the periphery of the economy and support them
to go back to school either in South Africa or in Zimbabwe

7. The Official Discourse: Anti-Child Work and Girls Work
Approach
• Girls were often told that without education they will later be very
vulnerable to being abused by their future husbands as they will
be very depended on them to survive economically
• working migrant girls were alienated from the ideal state of
childhood, girlhood/womanhood
• Promiscuous label/stereotyping – working independent migrant
girls were seen as lacking morals and engaging in sex work by aid
workers and migrant boys
- depicted as far from “innocence”
“Good girls (my emphasis) do not cross the border. There are
no girls amongst these people”, said one independent migrant boy

8. Informal Representations /The Unofficial
Discourse: Pro-Child Work (1)
• Bourdillon and Spittler commented that “the widespread view in
African cultures is that work is essential to rearing children and
preparing them for constructive adult life. According to this view,
work provides necessary discipline and experience of
responsibility (2012: 11)”
• Aid workers and Independent migrant boys cast the girlhood and
childhood of independent working migrant girls positively - they
saw them as victims, vulnerable and people who should work, and
people with a high sense of responsibility
– One of the aid workers argued that “the child labour law is
not relevant to people who have left [behind] orphaned
siblings to fend for”

9. Informal Representations /The Unofficial
Discourse: Pro-Child Work (2)
• This indicates the limitations of the idealised global notion of
childhood and girlhood which views children including girls as
dependents and free from work except play
• Independent migrant girls constructed themselves as victims,
vulnerable and people who were engaging in survival acts

10. What are the consequences of the complex and
contradictory representations of independent children?
(1)
The different representations of independent migrant girls naturally
generated different consequences
•Gendered childhoods
•Situational understandings of childhood and vulnerability – helped
migrant girls BUT at times withdraw these children’s childhood
status or innocence (e.g. girls who have crossed a border, living and
working in the streets)
•Providing and withdrawal of assistance to some children
• Unlawful detention of migrant girls
•Aid workers’ sympathy for migrant children heightened for migrant
girls

11. What are the consequences of the complex &contradictory
representations of independent migrant girls? (2)
• Blame the victim - “the iconography of victimhood” (Poretti,
Hanson, Darbellay and Berchtold, 2013: 2) of independent
children/particulaly migrant girls was not consistently mobilised
and deployed by aid workers
• Legitimisation/Normalisation of abuse, exploitation and violence
against certain children (migrant girls)
• Girls’ agency - Utilisation of social capital of being a child, a girl,
vulnerable/of victim of violence abuse, exploitation
• The economy of childhood was at times related to space.
Paradoxically, during informal encounters between independent
migrant children and aid workers, the former tended to have
limited childhood and victimhood social capital outside the place of
safety

12. Conclusion (1)
• There were gendered childhoods, formal and informal
representations of independent migrant girls interfacing with
humanitarian workers
• The findings suggest that humanitarian workers’ contradictory and
at times binary representations of independent children in
everyday life – at times seeing them as innocent and vulnerable
and at other times perpetrators of violence – represents their
complex, conflicted and situational understandings of girlhood,
childhood and vulnerability
• Tacit acceptance by aid workers that migrant girls are different as
they felt that these children lived and experienced childhood
differently from other children - an acknowledgement of the
discourse of multiplicity of childhood (Lancy, 2008)

13. Conclusion (2)
• Study supports’ Hashim and Thorsen (2011: 114) point that
“childhood is lived and experienced contextually” and Ensor’s
(2010: 16) observation that “Discourses on children and childhood
are fluid and evolving”. Representations of independent migrant
girls change with context, interests and are shaped by various
discourses
– The discourses of innocence and girls being more vulnerable at
times were constantly negotiated/ challenged
• Different representations of independent migrant children - a
contradiction to the universal view of childhood which aid workers
espoused during formal interactions - naturally attract different
consequences
– For example, negatively portraying migrant girls functioned to
silence children’s views and legitimised the imposition of adults’
views as well as interventions aimed at empowering the girl
child