African Centre for Migration & Society, Wits University

22/05/2026

🔉 EVENT: Join us next week for this hybrid public seminar by ACMS postdoctoral fellow, Dr Lydia Moyo (PhD), on 'Home Beyond Borders: Belonging and Identity among Zimbabwean Venda-Speaking Migrants in South Africa'. Her discussant will be ACMS’s researcher and postgraduate studies coordinator, Dr. Paddington Mutekwe.

📆 Date: Wednesday, 27 May 2026
⏰ Time: 12:30-13:30 (GMT+2)
📍 Venue: ACMS Seminar Room (2163), Solomon Mahlangu House (2nd Floor), Wits - University of the Witwatersrand (see directions here: https://tinyurl.com/46am68us)
💻Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/3dwkccpp, meeting ID: 957 8662 4514, passcode: 012731
ℹ️ More information: https://tinyurl.com/4fez3wtp

📝 Abstract:
This article explores how Zimbabwean Venda-speaking migrants in Pretoria, South Africa, construct and negotiate meanings of home under conditions of prolonged and precarious migration. Drawing on qualitative data from 30 participants collected through semi-structured interviews and analysed thematically using Atlas.ti, the study shows that home extends beyond a fixed geographical place to include emotional attachment, memory, cultural practice, and social relationships. Participants use embodied practices, such as food and music, to sustain a sense of belonging across borders while maintaining connections to Zimbabwe. Although migration was often initially viewed as temporary, prolonged residence fostered forms of rootedness in South Africa alongside enduring transnational ties. The article argues that homemaking among precarious migrants is both portable and spiritually anchored through everyday cultural reproduction, ancestry, land, and burial sites, contributing to debates on transnational belonging and identity.

20/05/2026

🚨 REMINDER: Don't forget to join us today for this panel discussion by Prof. Jane Freedman (Université Paris VIII Vincennes - Saint-Denis) and Dr Aron Tesfai (Independent Researcher) about the Growing Up Across Borders (GRABS) project.

📆 Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2026
⏰Time: 12:30-13:30 (GMT+2)
📍Venue: ACMS Seminar Room (2163), Solomon Mahlangu House (2nd Floor), Wits - University of the Witwatersrand (see directions here: https://migration.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/DirectionsACMS.pdf)
ℹ️For more details and the Zoom link, visit our website: https://migration.org.za/acms-seminar-growing-up-across-borders/

📝Abstract:
Growing Up Across Borders (GRABS) is a project at the Université Paris 8 that explores how migration, mobility, and urban life shape the health, wellbeing, and everyday experiences of young people across Southern Africa. Bringing together research, dialogue, and community engagement, the project focuses particularly on the ways mobile and migrant youth navigate access to healthcare, social support, education, and opportunities within contexts of inequality and precarity. By centring young people’s lived experiences across borders, the project aims to generate evidence that informs more inclusive policies, responsive health systems, and youth-centred approaches to social justice and development.

European Research Council

20/05/2026

15/05/2026

🔉 EVENT: The ACMS invites you to this panel discussion by Prof. Jane Freedman (Université Paris VIII Vincennes - Saint-Denis) and Dr Aron Tesfai (Indepedent Researcher) on the European Research Council (ERC) funded Growing Up Across Borders (GRABS) project.

📆 Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2026
⏰Time: 12:30-13:30 (GMT+2)
📍Venue: ACMS Seminar Room (2163), Solomon Mahlangu House (2nd Floor), Wits - University of the Witwatersrand (see directions here: https://migration.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/DirectionsACMS.pdf)
ℹ️For more details and the Zoom link, visit our website: https://migration.org.za/acms-seminar-growing-up-across-borders/

📝Abstract:
Growing Up Across Borders (GRABS) is a project at the Université Paris 8 that explores how migration, mobility, and urban life shape the health, wellbeing, and everyday experiences of young people across Southern Africa. Bringing together research, dialogue, and community engagement, the project focuses particularly on the ways mobile and migrant youth navigate access to healthcare, social support, education, and opportunities within contexts of inequality and precarity. By centring young people’s lived experiences across borders, the project aims to generate evidence that informs more inclusive policies, responsive health systems, and youth-centred approaches to social justice and development.

15/05/2026

📰 OP-ED: 'When good writing becomes bad ethics — the voyeuristic gaze in s*x work reporting'

🔗 https://migration.org.za/op-ed-when-good-writing-becomes-bad-ethics-the-voyeuristic-gaze-in-s*x-work-reporting/

📝 This opinion piece by ACMS associate researchers Dr Becky Walker and Dr Marlise Richter challenges the voyeuristic framing often used in reporting on s*x workers; arguing that compelling storytelling should never come at the expense of dignity, context, or human rights.

💡 The article reminds us that s*x workers are too often reduced to symbols, scenery, or spectacle, rather than being recognised as workers and rights-bearing individuals navigating criminalisation, violence, and structural inequality.

⁉️ It raises urgent questions about media ethics, representation, and the power journalism has in shaping public perception.

S*x Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce
Daily Maverick
Wits - University of the Witwatersrand

*xWork

12/05/2026

🎥 VIDEO: South Africa has strong legal and policy commitments toward Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and the protection of s*xual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). However, findings from a rapid ethnographic assessment in Johannesburg, across the inner-city and Soweto, highlight a clear gap between policy and lived reality.

If you missed ACMS's post-doctoral fellow Dr Lucy Khofi presentation on: ‘Fixed Systems, Mobile Lives: Structural Misalignment and the Negotiation of S*xual and Reproductive Health Care among Mobile Adolescents and Young People in Johannesburg’, visit our website for the short video recap: https://migration.org.za/video-fixed-systems-mobile-lives/

12/05/2026

🚨 REMINDER: Don't forget to join us tomorrow for this hybrid public seminar on, 'The Adversity Grid: Beyond Epistemological Traps in the Gendered Liminality of Unaccompanied Migrant Boys', by ACMS’s doctoral researcher Tanatswa Chineka. His respondent will be Professor Edmos Mtetwa of the Department of Social Work at the University of Zimbabwe - uofzfb.

📆 Date: Wednesday, 13 May 2026
⏰Time: 12:30-13:30 (GMT+2)
📍Venue: ACMS Seminar Room (2163), Solomon Mahlangu House (2nd Floor), Wits - University of the Witwatersrand (see directions here: https://tinyurl.com/46am68us)
ℹ️For more details and the Zoom link, visit our website: https://tinyurl.com/ms3uz43w

11/05/2026

🚨FEATURE: 🌍 Leading up to the second Africa – Europe Clusters of Research Excellence (CoRE) conference hosted by the University of Glasgow in June, CoRE is highlighting some key activities of each of the clusters.

This week they are featuring the Cluster of Research Excellence (CoRE) in Migration & Health, co-led by the ACMS at Wits - University of the Witwatersrand, along with Uppsala University.

🧳This cluster addresses the scientific challenges of migration and health across the AU-EU migration corridor, developing collaborative research that can generate cross-country policy approaches to support good health for migrants and migration-impacted communities.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗥𝗘’𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝗱𝗲:
🎓 Organising a Winter School at the University of the Witwatersrand on researching migration and health in Africa, with over 40 participants
📺 Hosting a webinar series ➡️ https://www.youtube.com/
✈️ Coordinating an exchange programme enabling master students from Uppsala University to undertake an internship at the Cluster, hosted by the ACMS
⭐ And much more!

🌐 Learn more about the CoRE here 👉 https://mighealth-au-eu.org/
🔎 Discover the initiative👉 https://www.the-guild.eu/africa-europe-core/

📸 Jecinta Atieno Okumu

06/05/2026

🔉 EVENT: The African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) invites you to this hybrid public seminar titled, 'The Adversity Grid: Beyond Epistemological Traps in the Gendered Liminality of Unaccompanied Migrant Boys', by ACMS’s doctoral researcher Tanatswa Chineka. His respondent will be Professor Edmos Mtetwa of the Department of Social Work at the University of Zimbabwe - uofzfb.

📆 Date: Wednesday, 13 May 2026
⏰Time: 12:30-13:30 (GMT+2)
📍Venue: ACMS Seminar Room (2163), Solomon Mahlangu House (2nd Floor), Wits - University of the Witwatersrand (see directions here: https://tinyurl.com/46am68us)
ℹ️For more details and the Zoom link, visit our website: https://tinyurl.com/ms3uz43w

📝Abstract:
Unaccompanied migrant adolescent boys navigate health and protection systems from structurally precarious positions shaped by displacement, poverty, gendered expectations, and uneven institutional recognition. This paper argues that reductive framings of boys as vulnerable victims, resilient survivors, or problematic young men flatten the complexity of their lives and risk producing responses that are misaligned with their needs. Drawing on qualitative research in Zimbabwe, including interviews, focus groups, and field observations, I bring Renos Papadopoulos’ (2021) Adversity Grid into dialogue with scholarship on masculinities, constrained agency, and institutional misrecognition. Findings show that boys occupy a condition of gendered liminality and are subject to a girl-centred triage, achieving only partial recognition through the figure of the “good migrant boy.” I develop the concepts of interpretive displacement and differentiated recognition to show how boys are seen but misread. The Adversity Grid supports more accurate understanding, enabling informed best-interests decision-making and more appropriately tailored health and protection responses.