The Features of Maintaining Self in Migrant Space

SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN 63 (1), January – April 2014, pp. 41–58 © Indian Sociological Society

The Social Face of Networks: The Features of Maintaining Self in Migrant Space Maheshvari Naidu The social network perspective starts with individual actors and observes, among other things, the social and opportunistic ties and emerging patterns of arrangements within the group structure. This paper is a theoretical engagement with networks as a sociological phenomenon and is concerned with how these patterns of arrangements are ordered along the notion of boundaries that facilitate reciprocal kinship relations and articulation of self. It works through the theoretical lens of social identity theory and draws from three qualitative studies amongst two small networks of migrants: from Gujarat in India and from Sierra Leone in North Africa. It uses the comparative ethnographic vignettes and qualitative face-to-face interviews from those studies to draw attention to how small-scale networks perform the role of kinship circles and offer constructed relationships that migrants can turn to within the host society. The study engages with these constructed and reciprocal relationships through the analytic tool of boundaries and probes how these networks further help in holding together a sense of self and identity within a foreign host space. [Keywords: boundaries; identity; networks; nodal ties; South Africa]

This paper looks at two different small migrant groups or networks: (i) Gujarati Hindus living in the Indian suburb of Reservoir Hills in the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Province of South Africa and (ii) the North African Sierra Leone migrants, mainly residing in various parts of the commercial and residential spaces of Durban city, also in the KZN province. It draws from three qualitative studies amongst the migrant members (Naidu 2009, 2010; Naidu and Nzuza 2013). All three studies demonstrated that, within the context of migrant labour to South Africa, the migrants tend to simultaneously inhabit what can be construed of as

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multiple spaces that reveal their experiences of heightened connectivity (within and amongst the networked members) as well as, often times, heightened dislocation (from family and friends back home). The South African studies added to other work (see Levitt 2001; Peach 2006) in revealing that, for many migrants, the global and increasingly mobile condition was one of heightened vulnerability. These categories of migrants in South Africa, like many other transnational labourers, emerge as straddling two geographic and cultural spaces in their movement back and forth between the „sending society‟ and the „host society‟ (see also Guarnizo, Portes and Haller 2003; Waldinger and Fitzgerald 2004; Voigt-Graf 2004; for studies in South Africa, see Muthuki 2010; Fomunyam 2011). The issue of re-territorialisation in terms of articulation of self and a sense of cultural identity, in turn, becomes heightened in instances where migrants feel a sense of disconnect from those they have left back home. The paper contends that this sense of disconnect is „corrected‟ by the migrants through their assertion of self1 in a foreign space. While there are various ways that the migrants may (and do) re-territorialise and establish „transient-roots‟ (see Naidu 2010), both in physical and emotional terms, this study looks at re-territorialisation in and through their membership in small networks. The paper further works through two heuristic devices in the context of each of the migrant networks: (i) Gujarati Migrants‟ Network: the migrants and their religious articulation in sustaining a sense of self and (ii) Sierra Leone Migrants‟ Network: the migrants and their turn to traditional home food in maintaining a sense of self. Both are relatively small networks: the former comprised fifteen individuals2 and the latter, forty members. The individuals from both networks were all first-generation immigrants and had on average been in the country for four to six years. Both networks were examples of small scale individualised migration, migrants coming either alone or with one other companion. Some, (especially the Gujarati migrants) had initiated contact while in their home societies with migrants already in the host country, while others (Sierra Leone migrants) arrived in the country and made contact with fellow Sierra Leone migrants through the Sierra Leone Association. In both instances, the migrants responded to similar „pull‟ factors and arrived in the host country (South Africa). These migrants appeared to be part of circuits of mobile individuals who one would consider as semi-skilled; the Sierra Leone migrants also included a few university students who regularly attended the Association meetings. Most, however, like the migrants from India, arrived here for the promise of more lucrative economic and livelihood opportunities.

The Social Face of Networks

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This is not to say that they are no professional and skilled Indian or Sierra Leone migrants who are in the country. However, this study focused largely on networks of semi-skilled migrants. The assumption is that this category of migrant is less cosmopolitan and economically mobile and, in turn, relied heavily on (opportunistic and mutually beneficial) relationships established in and through the networks they belonged to. Proceeding through each of these networks via such a lens, the study engages with how a sense of self is established and maintained, through boundaries, within the networks that the migrants come to inhabit. Circumscribed boundaries are either inclusive or exclusive. An exclusive boundary would refer to a migrant adopting a particular marker or behaviour that imposes restrictions on the behaviour of others, in this instance, the local South African community, that in some manner precludes their entry into the network circle. An inclusive boundary is created, by contrast, by the use of an identity marker with which other people are readily able to associate with. Sociology of Networks and the Notion of Boundary and Sense of Self Social relationships have always been at the heart of sociological constructions of the world. Sociologists such as Ronald S. Burt (1980) see social networks as the essence of social structure, while writers like Bernice A. Pescosolido (1992) maintain that there is a clear link between networks and sociological concerns with social structures and social interaction. A social network is, in turn, seen as a „structure of relationships linking social actors (Marsden 2000: 2727). Sociological interest in the concept of self, in attempting to map the field of connections between social location and contexts and (social) enactments of behaviour can be traced back to the work by George Herbert Mead. Mead‟s concept of the „generalised other‟ (1934) is explained as an individual defining her/his behaviour with reference to the generalised attitude of the social groups within which they reside; in this instance, the small networks which they inhabit. As an analytical tool, the concept of boundaries aids in mapping people‟s experiences of self in groups. I find the notion of boundaries to be especially useful in studies with transnational migrants who are experiencing that sense of self often as being in question and perhaps in conflict with new and foreign circumstances in the host society. Identity is of course far from fixed and primordial, and while scholars hold that identity is seen to be something flexible and somewhat

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abstract, the ways in which it is exercised, is often open and available on some levels to (outsider) view and perception. Sociologists Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966) remind us that social reality comprises social constructions created by historical facts. They add, however, that these constructs have real consequences on the lives and behaviours of human beings (Cote and Levine 2002: 37). Given the fluid and elusive dynamic of what identity exactly is, I take my cue from social constructionist theories such as that of Stuart Hall (1996), who suggests treating identity as a process in a bid to factor in the reality of the ever-changing, fluid, social experience. Notwithstanding a measure of inbuilt flexibility (see Groter and Raeder 2009), identity is made evident and visible through the use of markers such as language, dress, behaviour, etc., and, as this paper discusses, through articulation of one‟s religion and the consuming of one‟s traditional foods. Markers help to create the boundaries that define similarities or differences between the one wearing the marker and the one perceiving the marker. The concept of boundaries is thus useful here for demonstrating how identity or sense of self is articulated amongst foreign migrants, and to the outside local communities. For Fredrik Barth, a group‟s identity referred to „the ethnic boundary that defines the group rather than the cultural stuff that it encloses‟ (1969:15). Such a definition includes both markers of self-ascription and those ascribed by others (Bottero and Irwin 2003). Boundaries and Sustaining ‘Self’, Network One: Migrants from Sierra Leone For Peter Weinreich, „ones ethnic identity is defined as that part of the totality of one‟s self-construal made up of those dimensions that express the continuity between one‟s construal of past ancestry and one‟s future aspirations in relation to ethnicity‟ (1986: 238). In another work, Weinreich (1998) points out that the strand of identity that is one‟s so called „ethnic‟ identity has an intergenerational continuity that other strands, such as gender and occupational identity, do not have. The heuristic device of food is thus considered particularly apposite to bringing a critical gaze to this kind of intergenerational continuity, for food can be considered a vital and dynamic part of people's intergenerational sense of culture and identity. This is because people often identify and associate with the food they eat, and have eaten since they were young, and which they remember as being part of their family and cultural traditions. This is the case with traditional „home food‟ or food that one is accustomed to eating back home, with friends and family.


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Moving from one country to another has a cluster of implications for migrants and these may include adjusting to the new environment while having to hold on to their identity and sense of self, or who they see and experience themselves as. It is, however, notoriously difficult to plot the path and patterns of migratory flows from Sierra Leone into South Africa as there is dearth of literature concerning this particular category of migrants. Unlike the circuits and trajectories of mobility of Indians from India into South Africa (within colonial arrangements of labour exchange), which is discussed in the next section, there has been less work done with Sierra Leone migrants. One possible reason is that many migrants from Sierra Leone are in the country without proper documentation, and prefer to live „under the radar‟, and would prefer to avoid researchers. Another possible reason is that many of these migrants, aside from responding to particular push and pull factors of enhanced economic livelihoods, etc., are also fleeing from strife torn parts of their home country. All of this makes this a potentially elusive sample group. The establishment of the Sierra Leone Association (for all Sierra Leone migrants in Durban, KZN) fortunately allowed for a researchable sample of participants to be identified. Additionally, a valuable key informant, who was a student at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, was used to gain trust and entry into the Association. Through this key informant, many rich narratives were excavated. Sierra Leone migrants‟ narratives (see Naidu and Nzuza 2013) reveal that they use food as a way of reaffirming their „home cultures‟ and identity. These are encapsulated in informants‟ stories: When we are here together it is like we are at home, we eat our ‘home food’ and speak our language just like we do at home… No one calls us makwerekwere.3 This is our home for the four, five hours we spend together.

Social identities are grounded in our perceptions of social group membership,4 and enactments such as sharing food and eating together. Scholars such as L. Cuba and D. Hummon (1993), and more recent scholars such as A. Philipp and E. Ho (2010), have shown that, in satisfying their longing for home, migrants generally attempt to „bring home‟ artefacts that remind them of their home and culture, often gathering together on culturally significant days, and eating „home food‟, attempting to re-territorialise their space. Even though such acts do not, literally bring „home‟ to the migrants, the artefacts and social events evoke powerful memories of home. Through re-territorialising their space in this fashion, they reveal that they are attempting to re-create and strengthen their assertion of identities (who they feel they are) within the

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host society. „Home‟ is evoked through „indigenous‟ or „home food‟. It reminds the migrants „of whom they are‟ (Counihan and Van Esterin 1997). The narrative of Johan reveals this poignantly: I left everyone at home and I came here alone. It was hard at first. Being alone, not knowing anyone. I needed something that would connect me with home. I remember seeing a young boy selling home-made ginger beer [like back in Sierra Leone]. I wasn't thirsty, but bought it because it reminded me of home.

Thus, food can be seen as a powerful identity-maker with migrants sharing that 'home food' is part of who they are. In as much as it seems to mark who they are; it also marks who they are not, that is, the local Black South Africans. The social identification theory reveals that identity is derived through group membership. This is because social identity is shared with others and it provides a basis for shared social action. Social identification also provides a lens through which people are seen as a group that share the same characteristics. Consider the following narrative: I never used to be able to ask my Zulu acquaintances to leave because I'm a kind person, but one day I offered those with me, [two South Africans and one Sierra Leonean jollof rice and bitter leaf ... Haaa!!... Both my Zulu pals left before the soccer match that we were watching was over. I was offended at first, but not [if] it helps chase people away because I know they don't like it.

S.W. Mintz and C.M. Du Bois argue that „food serves both to solidify group membership and set groups apart‟ (2002: 109). Their argument shows that food can also be used to separate people, in as much as it can be used to unite and solidify group membership. People‟s identities are „guarded‟ by certain values, which they may feel need to be upheld (see Qingxue 2003). Such values are considered important for social cohesion as it forms part of what outsiders use to categorise people who are constructed as different from themselves. To maintain some measure of social cohesion, there are boundaries which are used to keep a certain identity distinct. Food habits differ from society to society and certain foods act as walls that segregate people. Thus, identity both includes and excludes. This process of including certain people and having particular expectations of them suggests that each collective or society attempts to have „exclusive‟ members. Such members are recognised by the manner in which they conduct


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themselves, which is acceptable to their societies. This is clearly revealed in the following narrative: South Africans don't like our food, I don't know why, but even if they try to eat it they never eat more than two spoons. But I understand they are not from my home. But it is nice to know that there's something that we can do alone [as Sierra Leoneans]. Most of our South African friends don't like our food, so we always try to find a person from home to eat it. In fact, whenever we [Sierra Leoneans] want to be alone at work we eat ‘home food’ [smiles] we bring ‘home food’ for lunch and we [Sierra Leoneans] sit together and eat.

Scholars such as P. Fieldhouse (1995), D. Lupton (1996), and A. Warde (1997), all writing over a decade ago, have argued that foodconsumption habits are not simply tied to biological needs, but serve to mark boundaries between social classes, geographical regions, nations, and cultures. This is significant in the case of Sierra Leone migrants. When they learned that some of their South African friends were not fond of their „home food‟, and thought their food somewhat „repulsive‟, they used it to distance themselves from their friends. For Ben and Jack, eating such food has created a wall between them and some of their nonSierra Leonean friends, especially when it comes to eating and sharing food. The Sierra Leone migrants, upon arriving in South Africa, realise that their food preferences and habits are very different from those of South Africans. And, even though they attempt to consume host country food, they are shocked by the type of foods that South Africans consider a delicacy. From the previous narratives one can deduce that food can be used as a boundary that separates groups of people and, in this case, it appears to, on some levels, separate South Africans from the Sierra Leoneans. These narratives also speak of these migrants‟ unwillingness, perhaps, to compromise their identity;5 rather, they chose to maintain/ sustain their identity by continuing to prepare and eat their „home food‟ despite the negative reactions they received from their acquaintances and friends within the local African community. Even though some of the migrants were open about having South African friends, they also confessed that they felt closer to people from other African countries, especially those from West Africa. This geographic preference, even for other migrants, can perhaps be better understood within the context that many food items and food preparations are shared by the people of West Africa. When informants were asked who they preferred eating and sharing their „home food‟ with, they responded varyingly: „No, I only prefer

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eating with people from Sierra Leone‟; „I don’t mind eating with other migrants, but I just can’t eat with South Africans especially those who do not like our food‟. Billy said that he has tried to eat with his South African friends, but, because the food is different from what his friends are used to eating, they had negative comments about the food. He also stated that he preferred eating with fellow West African friends, since they are familiar with some of the food items. The African migrants also stated: I cannot wait till next year so I can go home and be with my mother. I miss her, her smile and how she always knows when I am sad. I especially miss her cooking. It is one of the reasons I always miss home. She is that good. My sisters at home [in Sierra Leone] always ask me if I have found a wife here [in South Africa] and when am I bringing her home. But I always tell them I haven't. I've met so many wonderful women in this country and they have invited me for dinner... But their food is nowhere close to my mother's. Now what am I to do with a woman who cannot cook well, who cannot cook and enjoy my home food? When I have found a woman who cooks okra like my mother I will definitely get married. I don't want to get married then go to my mother's house for food every night.

Such narratives underpin the construction of an „us’ (Sierra Leone migrants) and „them’ (African locals) through a deeply embedded foodpreference. Almost two decades ago, Lupton argued that, „many beliefs about food are culturally produced from generation to generation [and that] food beliefs and behaviours are absorbed from early childhood‟ (1996: 25). Hence, the assumption is that Sierra Leone migrants grow up having acquired certain tastes and eating habits from their home country which may make it somewhat difficult for them to adapt to the food that host countries have to offer. One such example is rice, a food item considered as a staple by many communities, and perhaps assumed as being „pretty much the same, anywhere‟. Rice is also a staple food in Sierra Leone. Most informants stated that, in Sierra Leone, „you haven’t eaten if you haven’t had rice‟. This suggests that migrants long for rice and that eating it and thinking about it evokes memories of home. However, this fondness for rice does not apply to any kind of rice, but the kind of rice that is considered Sierra Leonean. The difference between the rice that is widely available in South Africa and that which Sierra Leoneans grew up eating, challenges these migrants‟ food preferences. Even their facial expressions showed disapproval for simple foods such as the South African rice; to them it


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did not deserve to be considered as „food‟. They thought its texture and taste unacceptable: I love rice and I prefer it over everything else, but not your South African rice. I tried eating that thing … it was so big I choked while eating it. I even tried over-chewing it, but I still could not swallow it. I rather not eat if I'm served South African rice. It is not filling and it is big and tasteless. I prefer our Sierra Leonean rice; it is more nutritious ... There's no way I can eat that thing, I'm a Sierra Leonean man, and at home men eat real food.

For these migrants rice is not just part of their staple diet, it also is part of their culture and identity. Because it is their staple food, they cannot easily replace it, as they feel they would be doing away with their home identity. Boundaries and Sustaining ‘Self’, Network 2: The Migrants from Gujarat Unlike the Sierra Leone context, the migration of Indians to South Africa has a longer history and is better documented. The earliest movement of Indians to South Africa can be traced back to the arrival of the approximately 140,000 indentured workers in 1860. The passenger or „free‟ Indians arrived in the 1880s. Later, in the early 1990s, Indians started arriving as „new immigrants‟ in South Africa. Last is the „labour diaspora‟, which is a reference to the migrant labour force – from the socalled unskilled and semi-skilled, to the highly skilled and professional. Many of these individuals are said to have left behind their families in India and continue to remit savings towards the maintenance of the family (Bhat and Laxminarayan 2010: 17). Having left behind family and friends, in many instances these labour migrants enter networks of constructed relationships with other migrants within the host societies (see Naidu 2012: 282–83). The Gujarati migrants in this study fit into this last category, having begun arriving approximately 7–10 years ago. They are a small and tightly networked group of Hindu transnationals (see Naidu 2009, 2010) who reside in the Indian suburb of Reservoir Hills in KZN. They are best understood in terms of a paradigm of „mobilities‟ (Urry 2002, 2007). Placed as they are, as a kind of global commodity in their migrant labour as salon workers, their mobile context as migrant labourers compels them to make their religion portable and flexible. This was accomplished

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through their kinship ties with other migrant Hindus in their small network of members. The fact that the migrants worked in a salon, which I began patronising, facilitated a degree of rapport and organic entry into this particular sample group. These Hindu transnationals, in turn, emerge as mobile, global subjects and reveal a particular way of inhabiting a transnational space within Reservoir Hills. They have slipped into small networks. They have not joined a local religious congregation or international religious network like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, prominent in the USA, especially for its efforts in globalising Hinduism. Nor did they seek out a local religious community through which to assert their Hindu identity. Rather, they have become part of a migrant network with multiple nodes that allow them to both socialise and enunciate their „being Hindu‟ amongst other Gujarati family and friends as they share communal religious festival time like Diwali (festival of lights) and ritual space at times like the katha (ritual storytelling and worship). One of the Hindu migrants, Tushar, reveals he, together with two other salon workers, have come to the job literally through their nodal networking and associative ties with each other, and live together, having rented living space from the employer‟s friend. He shares that they have a central Hindu lamp for domestic worship at their rented home. Apparently, all three had brought their own Hindu worship lamps from India. They had given two lamps away to other friends, who were likewise from Gujarat, as they felt that these friends needed to also have a lamp at home. They all now pray at the one lamp. Tushar confides that his parents sent him from India with a lamp so that he would continue to pray. He added that, had his parents not sent a lamp with him, he would have purchased one here. It seemed that all three comfortably took turns to wash, shine, and apply kum-kum (red-vermillion powder) to the lamp – all acts performed fastidiously in the households of Hindus, echoing Karim H. Karim‟s study of „diasporic media-scapes‟ that show that migrant communities endeavour to make homes, even if only temporarily, in milieus that „are away from the home(land)‟ (2003: 9). It is this in-between space (Bhaba 2000) that a diasporic mentally bridges the homeland and the new location. Karim asserts that diasporic reality is affected through the transformation of existence and that hybrid transnations have their being in the existential location of the milieu and not on physical territory (ibid.). In the new trope of home and the world, much appears to depend on the resonances of religious and cultural practices. The workers, who are part of a small network of approximately fifteen relatives and friends from Gujarat, claim not to be „too religious‟. However, they share that


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they pray three times daily: at home in the morning, in the shop (presumably with the makeshift „virtual‟ shrine of burning incense), and again at home in the evening. Tushar mentioned that he also reads the Hanuman Chalisa (a sacred text) at home and, when he has time, at the shop. All three observed the katha (ritual storytelling from a sacred text) and jundha (ritual hoisting of the sacred flag at their (migrant) Gujarati family homes. They point out that, in India, they attended jundha at the temple and katha as a household ritual. In the new trope of home and the world much appears to also depend too on the dissonances of religious and cultural practices. This further illustrates their flexibility, some of which was forced by circumstances, as in the less frequent visits to the temple, as they would back home. Tushar informs that he did not perform the pitra paksh (ritual obeisance to the ancestors) here (meaning South Africa) and elaborated that it was over a protracted nine working days (in the local context of daily work at the salon), and also because he had no time due to the long workinghours. He points out that he would have performed it had he been in India. His co-worker and fellow migrant Kamal said, he did not observe pitra paksh because his „family is not here‟. He had thought it futile to even observe the obligatory fast for pitra paksh, because it was useless here (in South Africa) as they are „not going to do the actual prayer‟. He stated that his parents were aware that he did not fast during the pitra paksh, and were not too happy about this. He said that when he does pray he did not place the sacred ash on the forehead as he would have done back home, as he did not „want that kind of appearance for the business, and the clients‟. He added, almost coyly, that he also did not think the clients at the salon would quite „like it‟. These responses give us an insight into the migrants‟ experiences of rupture and continuity in maintaining a sense of (religious) self. When asked as to why they did not visit the temple often here, as they did in India (Kamal and Tushar had mentioned that in India they visited the temple everyday on their way to school and even upon completion of studies, quite routinely), the response was that, in India, every street had in the very least, about two temples, making temple-going near and convenient. Here, in South Africa, they pointed out, the temple was „too far off and the long working hours compounded the situation. They shared that they visited the temple during Diwali, but only at night because during the day they are working and the „boss, being a Muslim does not give time off for Diwali‟. The transnationals appeared to perceive a kind of religious difference (which they were not able to fully articulate) in the kind of Hinduism practised by the local Hindus. While commenting that their interactions with the local Indian community

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(outside the salon) were relatively limited, and while in no way posturing religious superiority, all three commented that festivals like „Diwali and such are not the same in South Africa‟ because, aside from the parents and family not being with them, in India, Diwali was celebrated over five days. On each of these five days, huge celebrations are said to be held. In their homes lamps are lit, similarly to South African homes, and rangoli (colours) used to decorate the house, perhaps not so common in the local context. Arjun Appadurai (1990: 12) talks about „situated difference‟ or difference in relation to something (in terms of migrant) local, embodied, and significant. While this difference deserves more sustained examination than the inscribed parameters of this paper, suffice it to say that it was a point of awareness, although not one of discernible tension for the three migrants. Kamal, Tushar, and Rakesh narrate that every Sunday they visit the Sapta Mandir (temple) further up the same road that the salon is located. Rakesh quips that he goes to the temple just during prayers and festivals, adding that there is no time to go regularly. He spells out that in India he would go every day, and says „it was easy then because they had transport to go to the temple‟. This particular temple seems to have been pointed out to them by a Gujarati-speaking client patronising the salon, and it was patronised by the predominantly Gujarati-speaking community in the suburb. However, the migrants did not appear to have a special relationship with either the (Gujarati-speaking) priest or the local Gujarati-speaking congregation there. It emerged that the migrants did not feel comfortable enough to socialise or interact much with the local people. They claimed that the „fasting is different, prayers are different and celebrations of festivals, for example Diwali is differently celebrated”, adding that „in India extra things were done, which are not done here‟. Kamal shared, nevertheless the temple reminded him of home. All three claimed that in South Africa, they „have a social family‟ (of Gujarati friends and relatives), but in India they „have a biological family‟. They appear to have created their own networks of mainly Gujarati family and friends, or joined existing ones. This was accomplished through their kinship ties with other migrant Hindus in their small network of members. The Hindu migrants said, they spoke in Gujarati to their employer (a Muslim migrant from Gujarat). My own observations revealed that, although they spoke in English to the clients, they would still „speak across‟ the customers to each other in Gujarati. It also seemed that the migrants were most comfortable with the clients who spoke to them in Gujarati or Hindi, and far less communicative with those clients who spoke only English.


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It was revealed to me that some of the Indian migrants had local South African Indian wives, but these were „wives of convenience‟, so that they could more easily gain travel and work visas. Migrants like Rakesh had a wife back home in India, and Tushar had married in 2012. Tushar‟s bride was someone that his parents had recommended and she herself was from India. All of this confirms the Indian migrants‟ insulated articulation of self, away from the local Indian community.6 As Peter van der Veer (2004: 5) shows, at the end of the 20th century, migrant communities are indeed differently placed from those at the end of the 19th century. The wonders of the telephone, Internet, television, and high-speed planes bring them not only more proximate to home, but also more proximate to members of the (migrant) community in other places. It is true that the cultural distance with the traditions of „home‟ cannot be conceptualised in the same ways as before (ibid.), but notwithstanding their calling long-distance every third day to talk to family, we witness an enactment of connectivity with other migrants and simultaneous dislocation or boundary maintenance from those at home. And while there is a sense of a „death of distance‟ with the Internet having reached the most unheard of corners, it is still not accessible to all, for the three migrants share that it is easier to phone home as they have to make the long way into central town for good and cheap internet facilities. Nodal networks and ties assist in extending their lives beyond being commoditised labour(ers) (see Naidu 2009). In their self-styled narrative, the migrants are aware of their dislocation from the local diasporic Indian and Hindu communities (now in the sixth generation), but attempt to live as fully as possible through the nodes of (migrant) connectivity available to them, thus excavating potential marginality as mobile subjects who may otherwise have lived completely outside the Hindu diaspora in South Africa. One sees that they have to a large extent succeeded in making (flexible) sense of their religio-cultural landscape and their shifting mobile world. Through a networking of an equally mobile (as themselves) and woven together social and religious life, what J. Urry (2007: 274) refers to as „interspatial‟ religious and social, they have re-territorialised the local space into meaningful space, or „home‟ of sorts. Urry (ibid.: 280) points out that it is the person that becomes the „portal‟ in the network and, in so doing, avoids frictions of religiocultural distance. This is certainly valid for the Hindu migrants who are seen to have managed translating, in both sacred and secular terms, transnational space into a kind of flexible and mobile „home‟ space. Much of this has been possible through a casual, but sustained maintenance of who they are, the kind of Hindus they are, against who

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they are not, that is, the local Indian Hindus. While this process of „othering‟ and social reticence was not aggressive in any way, responses from the patrons confirmed that the Indian migrants preferred to mix amongst themselves. The interviews by Yoon Jung Park and Pragna Rugunanan (2011) with Indian migrants situated in the province of Gauteng (600 km from KZN, the location of this study) revealed particular lines of boundaries or divisions. According to them, „the lines can be drawn along several different axes including generation/time in South Africa with established/settled migrants aligning themselves against the newcomers; established locals in this instance are the „insiders‟, while the newer South Asian migrants are the outsiders‟ (ibid.:19). Certainly, this was true for the Indian migrants (first generation) and the diasporic Indians (sixth generation) and bears out my empirical observations about a certain measure of boundary maintenance. Conclusion Sociology places a certain measure of explanatory weight on the concept of social role-behaviour. The notion of identity and identity assertion is especially discerned in the instances of the Gujarati Hindu and the Sierra Leone migrants who seek actively to play out previously learned social roles; who they are as religious individuals in the case of the Hindu Indian migrants, and who they are in terms of what they eat, in the context of the West African Sierra Leone migrants. The lens of social constructionism allows us to understand that identity is formed by a personal choice of holding on to certain characteristics and behaviours in terms of one‟s own understanding of self and allowing for whatever degree of reification or dynamic fluidity one prefers to embrace within the given situated context. R. Jenkins states that „individual identity formation has its roots in our earliest processes of socialization‟, adding that „collective identities must always be understood as generated simultaneously by group identification and social categorization‟ and that collective identity provides a sense of security for its members (1996: 21). This is done by making the world meaningful and a socially rewarding place. For D. Bhugra (2004), the concept of self refers to how people think of themselves and how they perceive themselves, within the world rendered meaningful. Social identification reveals how these migrants saw themselves as being part of a group, and how they used their common interests in defining themselves. Jenkins argues that „collective identities emphasize how people are similar to each other, what they are believed


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to have in common‟ (1996: 80; see also Hogg and Vaughan 2002). For the Sierra Leoneans, this is made possible through their network of members and their re-enactments around traditional food, which serves as creating a kind of home space while in a foreign land. For the Gujarati Hindus, it is made possible through communal observance and assertion of their religious and cultural identity, domestic worship, observing the household ritual of katha, etc. The narratives and the observations from both the networks of migrants also reveal that this sense of self and identity-articulation within the group also works to erect boundaries and borders. During attendance at the meetings, migrants reveal that the Sierra Leone Association acts as a shield which protects (prevents?) the migrants from completely adapting to the South African way of doing things. Thus, it is during these meetings that these migrants are given the platform to be who they are, to connect with their home identity and each other, which assists them to maintain a sense of shared and collective identity. It also acts to mark and somewhat cuts them off from who they are not, that is, the local African community. In the case of the Hindu migrants choosing to form small insular groups and offer worship amongst themselves creates a sense of being a Hindu and doing Hinduism, which is perhaps different from the local Hindu community. Thus, while they revealed that they do attend the local temple, they shared that this was not regular, and that with their long work hours, sometimes it was easier to offer worship (arti) at the „house lamp‟ and amongst themselves. Religion and food‟ may well appear removed from each other and rather diverse heuristic lenses to choose. However, these two artefacts (of identity) are not so far from each other as one would first assume. Religion is a powerful intergenerational marker of continuity, and one can perhaps argue, even more so for Hindus who relish in their deep roots back to a rich religious past. It is a formidable marker, the assertion of which works to shrink space and connect the transnational migrants inhabiting the host space of South Africa, to their homeland of India. Likewise, food, or rather traditional „home food‟, is also powerfully evocative of home and self. It is complex and multi-sensory, satisfying with sight and smell and texture, and most vitally with nourishing memories of those left back home, in the sending society of Sierra Leone. Like ones religious identity, it runs through and nourishes the „veins‟ of the migrants, sustaining them in foreign spaces. Food artefacts play a vital role in helping migrants to maintain their identity as they form part of „who they are‟. Both „home religion‟ and „home food‟ act as cultural transmitters, as they are a vital part of who the migrants are back home, and they serve

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as wonderfully palpable and experiential reminders of who the migrants are, even when so far from home, and speak to rich notions of an identity capital (see Cote and Levine 2002). Notes Thanks are due to the anonymous referee for her/his valuable comments. 1. The terms „self‟ and „identity‟ are used interchangeably in this paper. 2. The total number of individuals was twelve. However, due to some language barriers, three informants acted as „key informants‟. 3. Makwerekwere is a colloquial term used by the local Black South African people in referring to the African migrants in the country. The term makwerekwere when selfappended or ascribed by the migrants is considered a neutral word. However, when ascribed from the outside, that is, used and deployed by the local African community, it is considered derogatory and exclusionary. 4. In the context of the Sierra Leone migrants in Durban, this membership is through the Sierra Leon Migrant Association, which acts as a network bringing the migrants together in weekly meetings. 5. While there is evidence of using „home food‟ as a boundary that separates these migrants from the rest of the people living in Durban, observations revealed that the boundary was not completely impermeable. The participants of this study have friends who are not from Sierra Leone, but, they claim, they have much stronger bonds with other Sierra Leone migrants and migrants from other countries than with their local friends. 6. There was an Indian migrant, Anil, who had married a local Hindu woman. However, he seemed more the exception. Although I could not get the other migrants to verify this, there were also rumours that he had another wife back in Gujarat.

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