Negotiating Conviviality : The Use of Information and Communication Technologies by Migrant Members of the Bay Community Church in Cape Town

  • This book is an ethnographic study of a group of migrants in Cape Town from Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa. It seeks to understand how migrants overcome structural exclusion by forming and maintaining convivial relationships through the Bay Community Church and how this is facilitated by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The book argues that ICTs are implicated in the negotiation of conviviality. ICTs allow for a negotiation of intimacy and distance; although their functions may facilitate more contact than is desired or further distance those already separated physically. This book interrogates the strict division between 'insiders' and 'outsiders' and highlights that migrants are able to sustain multiple networks and relationships, linking their home and host countries. Despite increasingly strict border control and animosity from host communities, migrants are able to overcome imposed identities such as 'outsider'. They do so by using ICTs such as cell phones and Facebook to emphasise their Christian identity, which is one of the main factors for inclusion in church-based networks. Membership with a mixed denominational church such as the Bay further challenges the notion that migrants stick to themselves. Inclusive communities such as the Bay and everyday desires for conviviality evoke the need to reconsider policies too narrowly articulated around the dichotomisation of 'foreigners' and 'nationals', 'home' and 'away', 'us' and 'them'.

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Metadaten
Author:Paula Louise Hay
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-605536
ISBN:9956-792-37-3
ISBN:978-9956-792-37-5
Publisher:Langaa RPCIG
Place of publication:Bamenda, Cameroon
Document Type:Book
Language:English
Year of Completion:2014
Year of first Publication:2014
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2021/04/30
Page Number:138
HeBIS-PPN:478267797
Sammlungen:Afrika südlich der Sahara
Afrika südlich der Sahara / Paket Afrikanistik
Licence (German):License LogoFID Afrikastudien