Security at the Margins Workshop Johannesburg 27-28 August 2018
Introduction On 27-28th August 2018 the Security at the Margins (SeaM) project hosted a workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa. What follows is a brief report from the workshop. SeaM is a four-year (2015-2019) partnership project between the Centre of African Studies at University of Edinburgh and the African Centre of Migration and Society at the University of Witwatersrand, funded by the ESRC and the NRF. It seeks to build research partnerships and improve research methods for better understanding security at the urban margins within South Africa, and beyond. This workshop was designed as a period of reflection and engagement amongst the academics and practitioners who form part of the SeaM team. Clustering around key themes, project members shared the results of their pilot projects and their broader work. The venues themselves – the Wits Art Museum, Ponte City, and the Parktonian – each sought to provide a different vantage point on the city, which served as both a foundation and a source of discussion during the workshop. The two days were divided into four panels, one roundtable discussion, and an interactive wrap up session. The panels tackled different topics; Panel 1 – Marginality in the post-apartheid city, Panel 2 – (in)formal (in)security, Panel 3 – Dangerous bodies: subversion, survival, security, Panel 4 – Mothering: Emotional and reproductive labour in the city. The roundtable dealt with methods, ethics and partnerships in researching security and marginality. The report will summarise the key discussion points from across the two days, generated by both the panellists and members of the audience. It has been collated by Oncemore Mbeve and Holly McCarthy.
Panel 1: Marginality in the post-apartheid city
Protea Hotel Parktonian, Braamfontein, Johannesburg Speakers:
Emma Monama (Wits) and SJ Cooper-Knock (UoE) Richard Ballard (GCRO) Khangelani Moyo (Wits)
Discussant: Facilitator:
Gail Super Noor Nieftagodien Key Points
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Whilst the focus of discussions was South Africa, these discussions of marginality have potential resonance on a global level Marginality, the speakers agreed, was a complex phenomenon. Not least, because society often relies on those it marginalises, in varied ways. Marginality should also not be seen purely in terms of ‘lack’ – the margins can also be sites of alternative ways of being and belonging; as well as sites of resistance Marginality is also not singular: we need to speak of multiple marginalities and the ways in which they interlock To understand marginality in South Africa, we must have a keen understanding of history but also be aware of the varied timelines of marginality that disrupt any simple apartheid/ post-apartheid divide All speakers highlighted the need to explore the important ties between capitalism and marginality, without becoming economically reductionist. The roots of marginality in the political economy were clearly demonstrated by Khangelani Moyo’s case study of Diepkloof, where the foundations of today’s marginalisation were laid by colonial industrialists. Today, tensions over jobs and resources are shaped by these historical roots but also by structural economic trajectories, shifts in social protection (or the lack of it), and contestations over what, and who, constitutes the ‘local community’. All speakers emphasised the importance of continuing to question our definitions of marginality and the ways in which it is studied.
Discussion • The discussion, led by Gail Super, explored some of the key points of the talks – intersectionality, marginality as more than a space of ‘lack’, and the positionality of researchers exploring marginality. • Opening discussion to the floor, discussion on these themes continued: o Researchers reflected on their personal experiences of researching marginality with varied (and shifting) degrees of ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ status o Participants noted the importance but also the challenge of developing policy-relevant insights and debated the role of the state in exacerbating or mitigating marginality o Discussions ranged over the place of Johannesburg in the global production of marginality and the place of the margins in creating future sites of resistance/ ways of doing and being o Finally, participants also reflected on the role of space in our concepts of marginality.
Panel 2: (in)formality and (in)security
Protea Hotel Parktonian, Braamfontein, Johannesburg Speakers:
Alex Wafer (Wits) Nereida Ripero-Muniz (Wits) Kamau Wairuri (UoE) Patrick Mutahi (UoE)
Discussant: Facilitator:
Noeleen Murray Rob Proctor Key Points
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The panels in this stream critically explored the concepts of both formality/informality and security/insecurity
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Building on long-running debates over the nature of informality, speakers questioned its parameters and its utility as a concept: can the definition of formality be tied to the state? To the law? To other regulation? Each of these ideas are challenging to hold to.
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All the speakers emphasised that security was a factor that was multi-faceted and ultimately subjective. It is shaped by experiences, hopes, and imaginaries that can be both global and local.
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For example, Nereida Ripero-Muniz has explored the security of Somali women in the suburb of Mayfair, Johannesburg. She found that participants understood their insecurities on both a local and global level.
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The pursuit of security – economic, social, and/or political – can play an important role in shaping plans for onward migration, as it did amongst Somali women in Mayfair, many of whom said that they were planning on moving internationally.
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As Kamau Wairuri and Patrick Mutahi explored, attempts by the state to increase their interventions in local security landscapes – through police reform or community policing initiatives – can have diverse, and sometimes perverse, outcomes.
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Nonetheless, Kamau Wairuri argued, there is a need to engage with policy makers in ways that simultaneously seek to unsettle the power dynamics that exist within the academy.
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In order to understand the roles that the community participation plays in shaping security, we need to have a more comprehensive idea of different actors within a particular locality and the power relations between them.
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For example, Patrick Mutahi spoke of the importance of understanding the role that landlords play in shaping the security of local residents: a role that is sometimes amplified by their involvement in community policing.
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Alex Wafer also picked up on the importance of tenure and security, exploring what informal settlement residents themselves deemed to pose a risk to their everyday lives.
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Speakers agreed that we need to think carefully about how participants’ experiences are presented and understood. For example, for some people, informal settlements promise a degree of security and for others, they represent insecurity.
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Given that security is subjective, our methods need to create space for subjective expressions and interpretations of security. Particular analytical lens – such as a Marxist lens – might be incredibly helpful in enabling us to understand people’s everyday lives. Then again, it might encourage us to overlook factors that are crucial in shaping people’s lived realities and their understandings of those realities. Discussion
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Rob Proctor led the discussion, deepening reflections on the construction of security and the nature of informality.
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Discussants acknowledged the continued fixation on physical security and the need to push beyond this in our understanding of (in)security,
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Conversation also explored the need to have a temporal focus: Security/ insecurity can be experienced as something in the past, present or future. While much research focuses on the lack of security groups currently experience, future imaginaries of security or insecurity are a powerful driver in everyday life.
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Ultimately, researchers must ensure that their work is presented in a way that can benefit participants and help policy change, where possible.
Roundtable: methods, ethics and partnerships in researching security and marginality Panelists: Dudu Ndlovu (Wits); Barbara Bompani (UoE); Keval Harie (GALA); Robinson Sathekge (City of Johannesburg) Provocateur/Discussant: Isayvani Naicker Facilitator: John Marnell The roundtable discussion took place high above Johannesburg, on the 51st floor of the Ponte City skyscraper. This location was selected strategically for the workshop. The skyscraper has an iconic status in the city. It both provides a bird-eye view of the city and has been viewed by those within the city as indicative of the bigger successes and struggles of Johannesburg. •
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Barbara Bompani discussed a photography exhibition of Ponte City, as a means of talking about the gaze that has long been fixed on Ponte, what this means and what it tells us more broadly about subjective understandings of belonging, security and home. Debates over what or who causes the insecurity in Ponte can, in turn, tell us a great deal about how the framing of security is tied to the exercise of power. Barbara Bompani built on this discussion to ask what these different narratives and the engagements or disjunctures between them can tell us about research methods and ethics. Centring the narratives and experiences of participants is important but this is in no way simple. As Duduzile Ndlovu highlighted, involving participants in – for example – the launch of a book project – is not necessarily meaningfully inclusive unless the power dynamics of that event (and the project as a whole) are addressed. Duduzile Ndlovu and Keval Harle both spoke of the need for ethical partnerships and also the challenges in maintaining them. Keval Harle also spoke of the importance of advocacy and the role that research, as well as practices such as archiving, can play in support and advocacy or marginalised populations. Robinson Sathekge also spoke about the difficulties in partnerships between the state and civil society, where there is a need for flexibility but also for accountability. Agreeing on defined roles, the division of responsibilities/ benefits and maintaining transparency on these agreements could prove challenging. All four speakers and the broader audience highlighted the tensions between the needs and drives of ethical partnership and the needs and drivers of funders. This mismatch can create tensions not just between academics and the broader public but also between more and less precariously positioned academics.
Discussion: • In discussion with John Marnell and Isyvani Naicker, the conversations around partnership, ethics and inclusion continued and deepened. • Questions included: How can partnerships be best built and managed? What does it mean to partner with participants and communities in a meaningful way? How might partnerships address some of the ethical issues that researchers face? Are existing partnerships working? In what ways do activist researchers or community-based researchers face similar or different issues? How can we maintain an awareness of power as it shifts throughout the research process and safeguard participants without assuming that they are powerless? • Conceptually, how can we avoid reproducing pre-conceived notions about security and insecurity? Should researchers think about developing research questions with their participants? • In terms of consent: Do the participants understand the project? Do they understand my role as a researcher? Do they have any expectations about the partnership that differ to mine? • In terms of credits: If research assistants and participants are co-creators in knowledge, how should this be recognised through intellectual property and accreditation? • In terms of partnership: How can we provide the institutional presence that enables sustainability whilst maintaining the flexibility and potential for inclusion that benefits from informality? How can meaningful access be improved for early career researchers?
Panel 3: Dangerous bodies: subversion, survival and security
Wits Arts Space
Panelists:
John Marnell (Wits) Noeleen Murray & Jono Crane (Wits) Lauren Royston (Sonke)
Discussant: B Camminga (Wits) Facilitator: Duduzile Ndlovu (Wits) Summary •
It is crucial that research methods and ethics grapple with the power imbalances that emerge around intersecting oppressions, including class, gender and race.
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Noeleen Murray and Jono Crane explore the ways in which other researchers have attempted to engage with the urban landscape – as, for example, a flaneur – and where this has led them.
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Jono Crane introduces cruising as a methodology – which he developed in a pilot project alongside Noeleen Murray, Barbara Bompani and GALA. He discusses this in relation to queer theory and explores what these approaches would look like in relation to archival curation in collaboration with GALA. What does it mean to create an archive or hidden geographies and experiences? How can this be presented in ways that reflect how this knowledge was forged? What does this tell us about the visibility or invisibility of knowledge on the margins?
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John Marnell speaks about story-telling with marginalised populations and the time necessary to invest with people in deciding what stories to tell, how to tell them and when/ whether they should be shared: how can the partnerships that we build, he asks, protect the time and personal investment necessary for ethical engagement around story telling?
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Lauren Royston explored the relationship between research and advocacy in South Africa around the work of Sonke and the potential for shifting policy, the law, and public opinion.
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The speakers reflected that when researchers are involved in creating and shaping their own data provokes questions about ‘what constitutes research data?’ Discussion
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The themes of the panel were picked up by B, who drew on their own work around rights, migration, asylum and diaspora as they relate to transgender people from the African continent.
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Discussion highlighted the importance and politics of the language that researchers use to talk about and with participants as well as the politics of knowing and understanding language when it emerges from lived experiences of marginality.
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Conversation also focused on the ethical challenges of matching consent as an ongoing process with the irreversible milestones of academic production, such as the publication of a book.
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Questions also emerged over the ownership of data – if a participant shares, curates and edits their story, where do the boundaries of researcher/researched author/participant lie?
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Given that the stories we tell are also subjective, and indicative of a particular time and place that we are in, what also does this mean for the validity or replicability of data over time? How/ in what ways does this matter?
Panel 4: Mothering: Emotional and reproductive labour in the city Panelists:
Becky Walker (Wits) Tackson Makandwa (Wits) Thulie Zikhali (Wits)
Discussant:
Alison Koslowski (UoE)
Key Points •
Drawing from diverse research projects, the speakers on this panel explored what mothering and care work meant in a position of marginality and migration
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Thulie Zikhali and others highlighted the challenges that mothers faced in terms of accessing health services, given the challenges that they faced in terms of documentation, discrimination, and language barriers.
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Here, as in other panels, economic insecurity played a central role in shaping people’s life choices and life chances. The struggles that people faced in obtaining jobs were compounded by their caring responsibilities.
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Picking up on a discussion by John Marnell in the previous panel, Becky Walker spoke about the importance in their project with migrant mothers of long-term time commitments in building trust and opening space for difficult conversations.
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Tackson Makandwa also spoke about the challenges of being a male researching female’s access to healthcare services, and the ways in which this shaped his relationships with participants.
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Researchers spoke more broadly about the mistrust they initially encountered from service providers and mothers who feared that they were sent by the government.
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Reflecting on their own positionality, researchers explored the degree to which experiences of care work were significant for them in driving their research and creating connections with participant. Discussion
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Discussion was furthered by engagements with Alison Koslowski, who explored identities within care work and explored the notion of fatherhood as well as motherhood. Conversations also built on discussions of positionality and research methods.
Concluding Thoughts and Continuing Collaborations Throughout the final session of the day, participants emphasised what a productive and engaging workshop this had been for thinking both conceptually about the ideas of security and marginality and for thinking practically and politically about research methods, ethics, and partnerships. There were, as one would expect, no easy answers to any of the conceptual or practical conundrums explored. Nonetheless, the engagement was incredibly fruitful and it was invaluable for project members to meet and spend time with one another, expanding the opportunities for partnership in the future. The Principal Investigators, Jo Vearey, SJ Cooper-Knock and Barbara Bompani would like to thank the ESRC/NRF for their funding and ongoing support. They would also like to offer special thanks to Thea de Gruchy for her help in organising the workshop.