Philip, June 2014, who taught me about the patience of gardening and that being quietly present is loudly felt and missed when you are gone. Finally, I would like to thank the individuals who participated in this research project for sharing their time, their experiences, and their stories with me.
INTRODUCTION
Background
I remember Thabani telling us wonderful stories about the farm he had lived on before he came to live with his mother and stories about his grandparents' wealth. I became interested in exploring and documenting this small but under-researched segment of the post-apartheid South African population: people who, through their upbringing, fall into a space that is 'in-between' in terms of race, culture, socio-economic status and the employer and employee relationship.
Research Questions and Aims
LITERATURE REVIEW
Extended Families and Child Circulation
During Apartheid, most live-in domestic workers' terms of service required them to leave their children in the care of others (Christian, 1998). White ladies often treated their domestic workers like children who needed supervision and control.
The informal fostering of domestic workers’ children
Romero (2011) provides a seminal text on the informal care of children of domestic workers outside South Africa. Christian (1998) found that one of the ways in which domestic workers exercised their parental authority was by restricting their children's access to their employers' resources.
Summary
In both Burkhalter and Manala (2001) and Romero, social mobility and other selected privileges offered by domestic workers' employers were seen as conditional on the domestic worker's child embracing and assimilating into "middle-class whiteness" (Romero, 2011, p.2). The opportunities and privileges offered to the children of domestic helpers seemed to be based on the children's acceptance of and assimilation into a particular social.
CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY and the MANAGEMENT OF SOCIAL
- The Social Construction of Identity and Difference
- The Rise of Anti-essentialism and Social Constructionism as Ontological Approaches 15
- How Societies Identify and Deal with Social Difference
- Identifying difference: ‘Othering’, Stigma, Stereotypes and Marking
- Managing Difference
- Identity and Difference in South Africa
- Apartheid
- Post Apartheid South Africa
- Acknowledging the organic nature of human interactions
- Hybridity
- Entanglement
- Summary
Dovidio, Major and Crocker (2003, p.3) argue that the social construction of stigma is based on the meaning attached to different social identities through, first, “the recognition of difference based on a distinguishing feature or characteristic”, and second, “a consequent devaluation of the person.” However, the methods used to challenge the reductionist nature of essentialism can create a dichotomy of 'the colonizer' and 'the colonized', 'the self' and 'the other', which can reshape fixed notions of identity and are defined. social differences that postcolonial studies seek to debunk (Young, 1995).
THEORETICAL ORIENTATIONS AND METHODOLOGICAL DESIGN
Theoretical Orientation: Narrative Theory
Both McAdams (2001) and Crossley (2000a & 2000b) suggest that identity is constructed through an individual's inter- and intra-personal dialogue and through the stories people tell about their lives to make sense of the world (Crossley, 2000a). Furthermore, these approaches suggest that the stories people tell are not only reflective of the self, but constitutive; they can make things happen, persuade others of the reliability of one's account over another, can lead to action and can shape lives (Crossley, 2000a).
Research Design
- Preparatory Phase
- Participants and Sampling
- Data Collection
- Narrative Thematic Analysis
- Reflexivity and Trustworthiness
- Ethical Considerations
Once an understanding of the topic and the narrative research method were established, the sampling phase of the research process began. With this in mind, I tried to remain aware of my positioning in relation to the research contexts and participants.
EMPIRICAL MATERIAL AND ANALYSIS
Establishing Belonging
- Becoming Part of the Family
- Juxtapositions: Attachments, Roles, Names, and Absences
- Insider? Outsider? An Imposition?
- Leaving Home: endings and continuity
- Summary
Living in the employer's household pitted the participants' own families against the employers' families. The stark contrasts that participants experienced between their biological and informal foster families are perhaps best seen in the participants' descriptions of their families. In contrast, participants seemed to see employer families as familiar, orderly, core, and limited.
Although all participants had biological siblings, they spent most of their childhood in the company of the employers' children. It appeared important for all participants to claim and name these individuals as their own siblings. Furthermore, it seemed to facilitate participants' understanding of their position and role within the employers' homes, as they were largely involved in family activities through the relationships they shared with the other children in the home.
This interdependence potentially fostered an even closer relationship between the participants. children and employers' children.
Identity, Race, and Culture: Passing? Faking? Fitting?
- Passing? Exploring Identities, Transgressing Boundaries and Limitations to Acceptance
- Faking? Accusations of Mimicry and Adoption of Prejudice
- Fitting: Hybridity, Entanglement, and Loss
- Summary
This in turn had an impact on the integrity of each participant's personal and social identities and the internal consistency between the participants' sense of belonging and their identity. The concepts of race and culture played a diverse role in carving out the participants' individual identities and guiding their interactions with the world13. In this research, the participants portrayed their assimilation into white spaces as a largely unconscious process.
The way participants dealt with these incidents seemed to be based on the security they held in their personal identity and sense of belonging. Two factors appeared to mediate these experiences and typically determined participants' ability to develop a sense of belonging and, ultimately, to legitimize their personal identities as adults. As participants grew up in predominantly white households, “black life” and what “being” black might entail was sometimes seen by participants as alien to their own experiences and contexts.
Despite some of the negative experiences that some participants experienced regarding their informal upbringing, all participants were happy to have grown up the way they did, seeing their experiences as integral to their personal beliefs, identities, and their life goals.
CONCLUSION
Summary of the Main Findings
While the participants' experiences and identities seem to express the theoretical understanding of identity in Nuttall's (2009) theory of entanglement and Bhabha's (1994) theory of hybridity, the color of the participants' skins still made them question whether their identity, their sense of belonging, and their 'ways of being' were 'natural' as they deviated from South African society's expectations of black identities. A key finding of this research is that specific characteristics of the informal fostering arrangement appeared to predict whether the overall outcome of the informal fostering arrangement would be positive or negative for the participants. Most important of these was the participant's understanding that they had the unconditional support and acceptance of both their biological and their informal foster families.
It suggests that the depth and meaning of the attachment children develop within these informal care arrangements can influence the children's life course as well as the ability to trust others and maintain relationships. Thus, confirming Burkhalter and Manala's (2001) proposition, it seems imperative that individuals entering into such an informal caregiving arrangement realize that their connection and acceptance of the child must be lifelong. If support and acceptance are guaranteed, informal care can provide a domestic worker with opportunities for social mobility, better education and better prospects for themselves and their families.
However, when the bonding relationships that form in these informal fostering arrangements are handled clumsily or poorly, the impact on a person's identity, self-esteem and sense of acceptance is potentially very devastating.
Suggestions for Further Research
Concluding Remarks
Come in the Dark”: domestic workers and their rooms in Johannesburg, South Africa, during Apartheid. One side claims that transracial adoption is in the best interests of the child and of society as a whole. Because she had grown up in Schmidt's German Christian home, she felt she had not learned "the life of."
He said he did this while copying what the other people in the house called them. When he was younger, he would take the toys he had with the Martins to his mother's house in the township. Zama's mother worked for the Smiths on their small farm and dog kennels in the Natal Midlands.
As Zama spent more time with the Smith children, she gradually began to participate in family activities. Zama's mother had worked in the Smiths' dog kennel business before she was hired as their housekeeper. Gugu felt that her inclusion in the Schmidt home taught her to be "like them", and this included sharing Dr.
Text Based Analysis
Being in-between people
This title does not contain the overtly racial connotations of the first and removes the idea of conflict. However, it presents Themba's images as actively positioned between separate black and white sides of the fence. The use of the word "runner" (line 2) also suggests a sense of speed and perhaps urgency in his movement across the divide he experiences between black and white.
This second interpretation is unlikely and this is confirmed by Themba's use of the word “but” in line 21. The introduction of the word “but” indicates that understanding both sides of the fence is not always positive. The use of the word “finally” (line 14) implies that this “move” of having black friends was something she expected to happen.
Sport and his ability in that area seemed to have the potential to bridge some of the tensions of being in between: "it was always a nice communal area, this, where nothing really mattered except your talent for the sports you know? ” (E4 lines 1 – 2).
Having and Not Having: finances, possessions and opportunities
In terms of the progression of his thinking, this relates to the position of financial responsibility and accountability that James aspires to, which is summed up in the saying, “I take no more than I need” (E5, line 24). In light of this view, he may experience, as the italicized sentences above suggest, jobs that are "bad," "really boring," and "boring." line 8) are pleasing because they facilitate his financial independence, perhaps also because they keep the concealment of his background intact. James describes himself as “happy” (lines 11 and 16) in relation to his current financial situation and in relation to his foster families.
Her experience differs from James's in that money is not “flowing in from everywhere” (E5, lines 23–24). In terms of finances and possessions, Zama casts her mother in the dual role of reminding her of her rightful position, while also being the person who assures her that she has enough in terms of money and possessions (clothes, for example in lines 13–14 ) to prevent her from feeling left out (E6, lines 9–11). In terms of opportunity, as with her access to university funding, Zama's participation in riding was an opportunity given to her directly by her informal fostering: “…like in the beginning [Mary] paid for it herself and stuff” ( line E7 4).
The tone of nostalgia in this section of Extract 8 suggests that the combined opportunity afforded him by the ownership of the Martins' toys together with the hospitality of his biological family gives him a position of inclusion and the experience of sharing of material possessions. the context of the township.
