Unisa online - Now you see me, now you don't

Inner-city Joburg migrant woman have been given a unique way to document the story of their daily life through a research project led by Ms Caroline Kihato, of the School for Graduate Studies in the College of Human Sciences. Ms Kihato presented her research on exploring an alternative way of seeing and understanding migration and its continental impact by documenting migrant women’s everyday experiences, interpretations, and self-representations.

Using the visual diaries of a group of African women migrants now living in Johannesburg, this research has two aims: providing material evidence of how these women live in Johannesburg and offering insight into notions of identity and struggles against misrepresentation.

Through the production of images, the women consciously and unconsciously overturn dominant images that depict refugees or ‘illegal aliens’ as powerless victims on the one hand and perpetrators of crime and prostitution on the other. Their snapshots construct new identities, invoking us to see them differently. In doing this, the women challenge our way of seeing – encouraging new conceptual tools for understanding how mobility impacts women’s socio-economic positions, how they engage with the host state, and how these shifting dynamics affect how we understand contemporary migration on the continent.