Publications

In this erudite research handbook, ACMS/maHp postdoctoral researcher Dr Thea de Gruchy and colleagues draw together the latest research on migration, gender and COVID-19, to contribute towards a better understanding of the immediate and longer-term implications of the pandemic on gender dynamics and roles in international migration.

Following an analysis of migration and its implications for health in South Africa’s government policies, the authors of this paper provide suggestions on how to advance engagement with these issues, in order for the country (and others of a similar context) to meet the goal of inclusion and equity for migrant and mobile groups in public health systems.

ACMS/maHp’s Professor Jo Vearey contributes towards the development of a conceptual model for understanding migration and health in the context of global climate change. Read and download the full paper here.

In this article, maHp/ACMS doctoral researcher Melanie Bisnauth qualitatively explores the experiences of 40 migrant women utilising PMTCT services in a high mobility context of Johannesburg, and how belonging to a specific typology might have affected the health care received and their overall experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this paper, the authors reflect on a four month pilot project which explored the use of WhatsApp Messenger – a popular mobile phone application used widely in sub Saharan Africa – and assessed its feasibility as a research tool with migrant and mobile populations in order to inform a larger study that would address these challenges.

maHp/ACMS Associate Researcher Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon was recently invited by The Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at Rhodes University to help answer the question: What does ‘home’ mean in the context of the urban housing crisis? Watch the full webinar here.

Globally, the use of mobile phones for improving access to healthcare and conducting health research has gained traction in recent years as rates of ownership increase, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, little is known about the opportunities and challenges associated with the use of WhatsApp as a tool for health research.

In this article, maHp/ACMS postdoctoral researcher Kuda Vanyoro explores tensions in the ways in which non-governmental activism, as represented by trade unions and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), frames the concerns of migrant domestic workers (MDWs) living in South Africa.

In this journal article maHp/ACMS associate Zaheera Jinnah explores precarity as a conceptual framework to understand the intersection of migration and low-waged work in the global south.

The purpose of this research project by maHp/Wits Public Health doctoral student Melanie Bisnauth et al. was to explore the impact of the Option B+ PMTCT program on the work of healthcare professionals, and to also understand pregnant HIV-positive women’s views and experiences with ART for life, as a way to better manage the Option B+ PMTCT program.

In this chapter, drawing on research work begun with transgender refugees in 2012, maHp/ACMS postdoctoral researcher B Camminga unpacks what it may mean for transgender people, who can no longer move directly to Cape Town, to have to stay in Johannesburg.

This special issue of Global Public Health seeks to bring scholars, activists, allies, and artists together to (re)imagine research and activism in the complex and divisive terrain of sexuality, health, and rights.

This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Johannesburg between 2011 and 2019 in inner-city unlawful occupations and temporary emergency accommodation sites. These are often referred to as “hijacked buildings”…

In this article postdoctoral researcher Dudu Ndlovu offers a poetic transcription of an interview between a researcher and a migrant nurse.

In this dispatch ACMS/maHp postdoctoral researchers Rebecca Walker and Elsa Oliveira reflect on ‘Mwangaza Mama’, an arts-based storytelling project that they undertook in collaboration with a group of seven migrant women from across the African continent, who are now living in Johannesburg.

In this article, maHp/ACMS doctoral researcher John Marnell, Elsa Oliveira and Gabriel Hoosain Khan draw on participant-created visual and narrative artefacts to offer insights into the complex ways in which queer migrants, refugees and asylum seekers living in South Africa negotiate their identities, resist oppression and confront stereotypes.

maHp/ACMS postdoctoral researcher Elsa Oliveira offers a personal reflection of their journey into participatory arts-based research with sex work migrants in South Africa.

Health governance has an important role in dealing with global migration, argue maHp/ ACMS director Jo Vearey and colleagues.

This article argues that there is more complexity, ambivalence, and a range of possible experiences of non-nationals in South Africa’s public health care system than the current extant literature on ‘medical xenophobia’ has suggested.

This paper highlights the ways in which local interventions that mobilise community members can improve the access that rural, migrant farming communities have to healthcare.

Informed by the findings of the research on implementation of the multisectoral response to HIV in South Africa, and drawing from the existing literature; the authors propose a framework for multisector and multilevel collaboration.

This article shows that whether migrant stocks appear to be increasing or decreasing in developing countries depends on three factors: whether a regional or an economic criterion of “development” is used, whether volume is expressed in absolute numbers or as a percentage of total population, and whether the data include refugees and asylum seekers.

This paper draws on research with sex workers and a sex worker organisation in South Africa, as well as reflections shared at two Sex Workers’ Anti-trafficking Research Symposiums. In so doing, the authors propose the further development of a Sex Work, Exploitation, and Migration/Mobility Model that takes into consideration the complexities of the quotidian experiences of migration and selling sex.

Very little is known about activism, as it relates to the issue of migration in South Africa. This paper fills this gap by exploring multi-level policies and advocacy experiences of activists working on migration in a post-colonial context of South Africa through the lens of key contestations around the trafficking discourse in South Africa from 2005 to 2018.

This paper argues that a focus on urban health in Africa is urgently required in order to support progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other global and regional public health targets, including Universal Health Coverage (UHC), the new Urban Agenda, and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.

Using qualitative methodology and a case study approach, this paper traces the development of the Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) mobile clinic programme in Musina, exploring the changing relationship between MSF and the state.

Read and download for free the Mwangaza Mama project e-book.

In this article, the authors consider what influenced the development of South Africa’s 2013 Prevention and Combatting of Trafficking in Persons Act (TiP Act) as just one example of migration policy-making.

Despite public health interventions targeting sex workers in an attempt to increase condom use, HIV still remains a significant health issue for those involved in the sex industry in many countries. In this paper, the authors analyse data collected as part of an ethnographic study of sex work in Soweto, South Africa.

In this issue, insights into how migration and mobility are mediating health within an African urban context are brought together.

Drawing from two qualitative studies with two African sex worker groups in 2014 and 2015 — the South African movement of sex workers called Sisonke, and the African Sex Worker Alliance (ASWA) — this paper unpacks what it means to be an African sex worker feminist.

This book tracks the conceptual journeying of the term ‘transgender’ from the Global North — where it originated — along with the physical embodied journeying of transgender asylum seekers from countries within Africa to South Africa and considers the interrelationships between the two.

The authors of this paper reflect on progress made in mainstreaming HIV in non-health sector departments, exploring factors that have enabled and hindered the process.

maHp doctoral researcher Elsa Oliveira helps map the global and regional trends in information produced about sex work in an effort to shed light on these imbalances.

In this article the authors contribute to the emerging knowledge on migration policy-making in two ways. Firstly, they address the relative lack of research on the gendered nature of migration policy-making. Secondly, they contribute to understanding migration policymaking in postcolonial contexts.

Drawing on discussions with policy makers, research scholars, civil society, and United Nations agencies that attended the 2nd Global Consultation on Migration and Health – held in Colombo, Sri Lanka in February 2017 – the authors emphasize the urgent need for quality research on international and domestic (in-country) migration and health to support efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This article examines the vulnerabilities and forms of structural violence experienced by migrant mothers who sell sex.

This article is the runner up for the UFS/AS Young African Scholars Award. Join us in congratulating maHp/ ACMS postdoctoral researcher B Camminga for this great achievement, along with their recent selection as one of the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans.

Based on research work among cross-border migrant women who sell sex in South Africa, this paper examines the ways in which the label ‘victim’ of human trafficking ignores the complex realities of human mobility.

This chapter describes the authors’ experiences in connecting a group of emerging Southern African scholars around the inherently interdisciplinary field of migration, urbanisation and health.

This study explores the [re]-presentation of xenophobia research findings in two popular South African newspapers: the Mail & Guardian and the Sowetan from 2008 to 2013.

This paper draws on Pécoud’s international migration narratives (IMN) as an analytical framework to examine the Global Forum on Migration and Development’s Civil Society Days (GFMD-CSD).

Although being an African, a sex worker and a feminist are often considered to be incongruent identities, in certain embodiments they intersect and inform each other. This Profile highlights what feminism can learn from analysing sex workers’ rights activism among a group of Cape Town-based sex worker feminists called AWAKE! Women of Africa.

In the South Africa chapter of this Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) report, maHp researcher and PhD candidate Ntokozo Yingwana documents how the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) and national sex worker movement Sisonke deal with human trafficking in the sex industry.

In this chapter, maHp researchers Elsa Oliveira and Jo Vearey present and discuss three related participatory arts-based research projects conducted in partnership with Sisonke: the national sex worker movement in South Africa.

This paper assesses the implementation of a multi-sectoral response to HIV in South Africa, through a case study of the Mpumalanga Province.

Read and download for free the Metropolitan Nomads: A Journey through Joburg’s Little Mogadishu project book.

This article takes an intimate look at the everyday life of Somali migrants in Johannesburg, where collective stories of migration and survival interweave with individual desires and hopes of seeking a better life outside a country shattered by decades of internal conflict.

Drawing on the thresholds approach, a model that incorporates geography and mobility studies to understand migration from the perspective of migrants, this article examines the importance of location and route(s) in determining the journeys of Somali migrants.

This article provides an overview of the associations between migration and health in South Africa, and calls for the urgent development of ‘migration-aware’ health systems.

This article explores the intersecting vulnerabilities of non-national migrant mothers who sell sex in Johannesburg, South Africa – one of the most unequal cities in the world.

This paper by the Members of the Researchers on Migration, Mobility and Health Group explores the five core areas in which action is needed to support the development of a global research agenda on migration, mobility, and health.

Hushke, S. (ed) (2017) KNOW MY STORY MoVE and ACMS: Johannesburg

This article shares insights into why we need to think differently about ways of doing research with marginalised migrant groups – including migrant sex workers in South Africa.

In this issue, insights into how migration and mobility are mediating health within an African urban context are brought together.The papers bring the voices of different urban migrant groups to the fore and provide fresh perspectives on approaches for exploring how to research and respond to migration, mobility, and urban health in southern Africa. Advocating for mixed method and multi-disciplinary approaches, the papers provide important contributions to multi-disciplinary thinking around complex social issues.

In order to inform future research, an exploratory study investigating the maternal healthcare and help-seeking experiences of migrant women living in inner-city Johannesburg was undertaken.

According to the United Nations, in 2003 South Africa had the highest number of asylum seekers worldwide. Based on interviews with applicants or former applicants to refugee status as well as officials, adjudicators and activists, the authors propose to analyze asylum as a form of life, rather than as bare life.

Cities of the global south—including Johannesburg—are associated with unplanned and unmanaged urban growth; poor urban governance (which is predominantly reactive rather than proactive); migration and mobility; and the resultant pressure on access to adequate services, including water, sanitation, housing, and healthcare.

This project is exploration of the ways religion and diverse forms of mobility have shaped post-apartheid Johannesburg, South Africa. It analyses transnational and local migration in contemporary and historical perspective, along with movements of commodities, ideas, sounds and colours within the city.

This paper examines the vulnerabilities and forms of structural violence experienced by migrant mothers who sell sex in Johannesburg. It argues that to develop a greater understanding of this group of migrant mothers there is a need to further explore the challenges that they face as well as the multiple roles negotiated in everyday life.

The impact of violence on children’s health and development has had growing attention in global and national politics. This article highlights key messages and learning points from the experiences of researchers who have worked with children and violence across the different contexts of the UK and South Africa.

This article explores the role of informal governance and institutions in the self-settlement strategies of Somalis in South Africa.

South Africa’s public healthcare system responses seldom engage with migration. This exploratory study investigates migration profiles and experiences of primary healthcare (PHC) users.

Oliveira, E., Meyers, S. and Vearey, J. (eds) (2016) Queer Crossings.  MoVE and ACMS: Johannesburg About the Author Latest PostsAbout Elsa OliveiraElsa Oliveira is a postdoctoral researcher at the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS), Wits University, where she is also the co-coordinator of the MoVE (methods:visual:explore) project. Since 2010, Elsa has been involved in a wide range of participatory arts-based projects with diverse migrant populations in rural and urban areas of South Africa. She has a PhD in Migration and Displacement and is

Oliveira, E. and Vearey, J. (eds) (2016) The Sex Worker Zine Project. MoVE and ACMS: Johannesburg About the Author Latest PostsAbout Elsa OliveiraElsa Oliveira is a postdoctoral researcher at the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS), Wits University, where she is also the co-coordinator of the MoVE (methods:visual:explore) project. Since 2010, Elsa has been involved in a wide range of participatory arts-based projects with diverse migrant populations in rural and urban areas of South Africa. She has a PhD in Migration and Displacement and

Schuler, G., Oliveira, E. and Vearey, J. (eds) (2016) Izwi Lethu. MoVE and ACMS: Johannesburg. About the Author Latest PostsAbout Greta SchulerGreta Schuler is a PhD candidate in creative writing and a doctoral fellow at the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS). Her dissertation focuses on the lives of migrant sex workers in Johannesburg.With ACMS’s MoVE project, Greta is facilitating creative writing workshops with sex workers and running the Gauteng sex worker newsletter, Izwi Lethu: Our Voice. Greta’s short stories and essays have appeared

Richter, M. and Vearey, J.  (2016) Migration and sex work in South Africa:  key concerns for gender and health.  In: Gideon, J. (ed) Gender and Health Handbook. Edward Elgar Publishing: UK About the Author Latest PostsAbout Jo VeareyJo Vearey is a Professor and the Director of the African Centre for Migration & Society, University of the Witwatersrand. She holds an Honorary Fellowship with the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, and a Senior Fellowship at the Centre for Peace, Development

Oliveira, E. and Vearey, J. (2016) ‘Know me! But, remember that this is only part of who I am’: a participatory photo research project with migrant women sex workers in inner-city Johannesburg, South Africa.  In: Arnold, M. and Meskimmon, M.  (eds) Homeland:  Migration, Women, Citizenship. Liverpool University Press: Liverpool About the Author Latest PostsAbout Elsa OliveiraElsa Oliveira is a postdoctoral researcher at the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS), Wits University, where she is also the co-coordinator of the MoVE (methods:visual:explore) project. Since 2010,

Vearey, J. (2016) Mobility, migration and generalised HIV epidemics: a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. In: Thomas, F. (ed) Handbook of Migration and Health. Edward Elgar Publishing: UK About the Author Latest PostsAbout Jo VeareyJo Vearey is a Professor and the Director of the African Centre for Migration & Society, University of the Witwatersrand. She holds an Honorary Fellowship with the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, and a Senior Fellowship at the Centre for Peace, Development and Democracy at the

This paper is an account of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Brussel’s projects in Johannesburg from 2007 to 2013, drawing on the ethnographic research of an external researcher (Wilhelm-Solomon) and MSF health worker and project leader (Pedersen).

In January 2012 the residents of an inner-city tenement building in Doornfontein, Johannesburg, were evicted on a court order. This paper documents how a group of blind Zimbabweans experienced threats of violence and accusations of betrayal, as they were offered alternate accommodation by the evicting company because of their disability.

Migration provides opportunities for health and economic benefits, and has the potential to positively and negatively affect health systems. This paper outlines the authors’ current research and existing responses to migration and health in southern Africa.

Drawing from interviews with non-national or cross-border migrant women who sell sex on a regular basis, this paper explores experiences of selling sex, motherhood and ‘keeping well’ through the lens of the city.

Studies researching interpersonal violence (IPV) are associated with a range of ethical challenges. In this article, lessons are drawn from three case studies exploring the experiences of different groups of survivors and perpetrators…

Existing evidence indicates that cross-border migrant women sex workers in South Africa are often marginalized by state and non-state actors professing to assist them. Trafficking discourses frequently conflate migrant sex workers with…

Sex work remains illegal and highly stigmatised in South Africa, resulting in sex workers – the majority of whom are internal or cross-border migrants – experiencing ongoing human rights violations and a high HIV burden.

In this article, the author presents and discusses three participatory visual and narrative research projects that have been conducted with migrant men, women and transgender persons who sell sex in two provinces of South Africa and examine the suitability of these approaches.

A perceived opportunity for improved livelihoods has made Johannesburg a target destination for many internal migrants moving within the borders of South Africa, as well as for cross-border migrants from around the continent and beyond.

Buufis is a well-known concept among Somalis at home and in the diaspora, although its meaning shifts across time and space. Literally meaning ‘to blow, or inflate’ in Somali, buufis initially referred to the dream of resettlement among Somalis in refugee camps in Kenya in the early 1990s…

South Africa’s Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Freedom Charter are globally ground-breaking for providing provisions of non-discrimination, and, of particular note, on the basis of sexual orientation.