A black man is a cornered man: migration, precarity and masculinities in Johannesburg

Abstract

Facing an ever-changing political-economic landscape marked by inequality, joblessness, and xenophobia, migrants in inner city Johannesburg are pushed towards the economic margins, or the ‘corner’ of life. In this precarious place, structural and everyday violence shape the daily lives and practices of men from various parts of Africa. This article examines how such men work to live up to self and societal expectations of masculinities while attempting to adjust to the socio-economic realities they face. Departing from the crisis in masculinity narrative, we highlight the multiple, creative ways that men navigate precarity. Our arguments are based on an ethnographic study of masculinities and violence, conducted from June 2017 to February 2018 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Drawing on the stories of two migrant men and more broadly from observations undertaken at Uncle Kofi’s Corner, a street corner hangout and our main ethnographic site, we show how participants mapped urban space to produce enclaved masculinities. In these enclaves, specific scripts on how to be a man were (re)constructed resulting in multiple and unstable masculinities in a perpetual state of becoming.