Migrants, Thinkers, Storytellers: Negotiating Meaning and Making Life in Bloemfontein, South Africa
  • 2021/246 pages
  • Distributed for HSRC Press

Migrants, Thinkers, Storytellers:

Negotiating Meaning and Making Life in Bloemfontein, South Africa

Jonatan Kurzwelly and Luis Escobedo, editors
Paperback: $36.95
ISBN: 978-0-7969-2598-5
Ebook: $36.95
ISBN: 978-0-7969-2615-9
Against the backdrop of Bloemfontein in the heartland of South Africa—but with lessons that translate to immigrant communities on every continent and at every socioeconomic level—the authors of Migrants, Thinkers, Storytellers argue that migrants are challenged by a violent categorization that is often nihilistic, insistently racial, and continuously significant to the organization of society. The authors also examine how both relative privilege and storytelling serve as instruments with which migrants negotiate meaning in their lives.

This collaborative work, involving immigrants as well as scholars and based on narrative life-story research, contributes important theoretical insights into the nature of social identification during the migration experience.
Jonatan Kurzwelly is postdoctoral researcher in the Institute of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Göttingen, as well as research fellow at the University of the Free State. Luis Escobedo is postdoctoral research fellow at the University of the Free State.