Precarious work and precarious resistance: a case study of Zimbabwean migrant women workers in Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract

While recognizing that women are part of the most vulnerable sections of migrant communities, the article affirms their social agency by locating their responses to difficulties they face as migrants within a framework of precarious resistance. Based on indepth interviews with Zimbabwean migrant women working in Johannesburg, South Africa, the article discusses a duality of precarious work and precarious resistance. Women who would have been carers of families at their homes in Zimbabwe, and been supported financially by men who worked in the cities like Johannesburg, are now breadwinners who take risks by travelling to Johannesburg in search of work. The first aspect dealt with in this paper narrates problems faced by the women when travelling to Johannesburg. Being women doubles the risk in a way as the women have to deal with violence against women and generalized lack of basic services and goods like those necessary for female hygiene and washing facilities. Arriving in Johannesburg means the beginning of a new struggle of searching for work and finding work which tends to be precarious. As a response to this precariousness, the second aspect of this duality comes into play where the female workers amass strategies and tactics which are defined as precarious resistance, because they are individualized and isolated. However, networks play a major role in anchoring precarious resistance of the women migrants who work as precarious workers in Johannesburg.