Projekt

The objective of this research is to explore the forms of ontological insecurity of urban migrants and their strategies of healing and frame this within a broader urban (bio) politics of life. In particular it will focus on the relationship between disease, disability and spiritual insecurity along with the multiple strategies that migrants adopt to seek healing for these conditions.The originality of the project is that it situates healing strategies within a broader ethnography of the urban migrant experience, and focuses on multiple healing practices, viewing these as implicated diverse forms of biopolitical and moral control. This project focused on Johannesburg will include both internal (South African) and cross-border migrants (from Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, and others). It will also include refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants.The study is to be conducted and completed over two years (October 2013 to September 2015) as a collaborative and comparative ethnographic project between the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Freie Universität Berlin and the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS), University of the Witwatersrand.

• Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald

  Universität Hannover
  Philosophische Fakultät
  Historisches Seminar
  Fachgebiet Geschichte Afrikas
  Hannover
  

• Dr. Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon, D. Phil

  University of the Witwatersrand
  Social Sciences
  African Centre for Migration & Society
  South West Engineering
  Johannesburg
  Südafrika