The economic lives of migrant women in a South African city: informal work, gender, and transformative possibilities

ABSTRACT This article explores the economic lives of 30 migrant women who recounted their oral histories as part of a project on migration, gender, and inclusion in the city of Durban, South Africa. The oral histories include narratives from internal migrants, South African women migrating from rural areas, as well as women arriving from other African countries. These narratives illustrate tangled and complex strategies and coping mechanisms deployed by the women to build economic livelihoods. This kaleidoscope of strategies works in both opposition and alignment with the contemporary structures of neoliberal capitalism and patriarchy. The article argues that intersubjective narratives are useful to make sense of how women navigate life and livelihoods when faced with the materiality of patriarchal social relations and a capitalist economy. Changes in women’s economic earnings and responsibilities have not coincided with large-scale dismantling of patriarchal ideologies, or neoliberal structures. Given this, there are limitations for transformative gender relations through engaging in forms of work. These fine-grained explorations of lived experiences require equally textured social and economic policies, which recognise how the workings of neoliberal capitalism rely on, and support, forms of oppression linked to gender and migration.