This thesis is about how female Xhosa migrants are positioned within social and spatial
structures in urban South Africa, and how they manage and negotiate this positioning.
Celiwe’s story is not unique; rather, her reactions exemplify the everydayness of my
interlocutors’ (both male and female) precarious life conditions. In my interlocutors’ attempts
to create stability and predictability in their lives, they relied on social relationships and the
resources found within their community. In order to understand the lives of the interlocutors,
a broader contextualisation is necessary. My thesis will investigate both the general context of
social and spatial structures in Cape Town, and individuals’ personal experiences in urban
city spaces.
In order to fully capture the story within this thesis, it is useful to create a foundation based on
Doreen Massey’s (1994) space and place theory. Within this framework women’s positioning
in the urban landscape can be explored on several levels with respect to the different ways in
which urban spaces influence my interlocutors’ lives. The dynamic between spaces, places
and people is a particularly useful perspective because of the apartheid regime’s systematic 2
segregation of people in both Cape Town and the rest of South Africa pre-1994. In this
introduction, Celiwe and the other interlocutors will be described as well as the research
placed within a wider framework. Before this, however, I will explain why women in Cape
Town became the core of my research.