Hostels in South Africa: Spaces of Perplexity

This book is about the transformation of KwaMashu Hostel in Durban in the twenty-first century-from a single-sex men's hostel to family accommodation in community residential units. It presents the continuities and discontinuities that take place as hostel-dwellers grapple with their everyday struggles. The broader South African labour market does not make it easy for rural-urban migrants, who continue to make the same journeys their grandfathers, fathers, and uncles-and later their grandmothers, mothers, and aunts-took in search of employment opportunities. Hostels in South Africa engages with the challenges and triumphs of hostel-dwellers, as they both resist and embrace the process of transformation, the clashes between men and women and across generations, and feelings of nostalgia for the past. The author's time spent living at KwaMashu Hostel during the two years of her fieldwork allowed her an intimate view of hostels from the inside. [Subject: African Studies, Sociology, Labor Studies]