'Kids sold, desperate moms need cash': Media representations of Zimbabwean women migrants
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Date
2016
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
NISC
NISC
Abstract
The article draws on 575 randomly selected articles from the South African Media database
to explore the representation of Zimbabwean women migrants. Using critical discourse analysis
(CDA), the article shows that some of the dominant construction types depict a picture of caricatured,
stereotypical and stigmatised Zimbabwean migrant women without voice and individuality. In turn,
the diversity of their actualities is not captured in the process of constructing the twin images of
Zimbabwean women as victims and as purveyors of decadent and other negative social ills in
society. We conclude that Zimbabwean women migrants appear in the SA media primarily in three
negative images: suppliers of sexual services, as un-motherly, and as victims. We also conclude
that there is need for media to capture the voices of migrant women recounting their everyday lived
experiences in different political and socio-economic contexts in order to account for the migrant
women's voices of resilience, defiance and victimhood and of agency, against the normalising and
marginalising influences of political institutions and national border controls. This would also help
capture the transformative nature of migration to the women, the 'home' in Zimbabwe and the 'home'
in South Africa.
Description
Keywords
Representation, Zimbabwean women migrants, South African media, Stereotype, Stigmatise
Citation
Mawadza, A. & Banda, F. (2016). 'Kids sold, desperate moms need
cash': Media representations of Zimbabwean women migrants. Southern African Linguistics and
Applied Language Studies, 34(2): 121-134