Browsing by Author "Combrink, Lize-Mare"

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    Re-negotiating space and place : intersections between migration and schooling in Kayamandi (Stellenbosch, Western Cape)
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2020-03) Combrink, Lize-Mare; Francis, Dennis A.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Sociology & Social Anthropology.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This qualitative study sought to explore the schooling and migratory experiences of African and South African migrant youth in a selected high school in the township of Kayamandi. The isiXhosa origins of the township’s name means “nice” or “sweet home.” The township was founded in the early 1950s, as a result of the Group Areas Act (Act no. 41 of 1950) and the segregationist politics of the apartheid regime. Today, however, South Africa boasts a multicultural ethnic and linguistic diversity in terms of its Constitution (the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996), but also in playing host to peoples displaced by human rights atrocities and environmental distress arising from the African geographies of war; namely, poverty, political and economic meltdown (Perumal, 2013: 673). Against such a background, participation in a foreign country, province, or neighbourhood steadily gains ground and presents its own unique set of challenges and opportunities for the young in township schooling, especially in terms of their desire for inclusion and integration within new and alternative configurations of community. On a theoretical and conceptual level, this study examines Spatial Theory, or the study of space and place, and its contributions to the sub-discipline known as the sociology of space and place. The study argues that this theory, as understood and acquired by the study participants, provides a means to engage various configurations of space and place and their intersections with notions of identity, position, and of community belonging. Methodologically, a mini-ethnographic case study design is employed in a “blended design” that allows for greater flexibility and adaptability in the choice of data collection methods. Consequently, a combination of three qualitative research methods are used that include in-depth interviews, a focus group discussion, and a form of participant observation. As a qualitative study, the data analysis also made use of a combination of thematic analysis and grounded theory. In this way, the study argues for the uniqueness of the migrant schooling of youth at the selected township school in Kayamandi. To achieve this, attention is drawn as a starting point to the social and material construction of space and place regarding the school and surrounding community to examine the intersections surrounding multiple markers of identity. With regard to the historic establishment of Kayamandi, the historical construction of race and ethnicity are further explored that mark place in the present, thus begging the question: “Whose home?” and “Why?”