Browsing by Author "Xulu-Gama, Nomkhosi"

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    Comfortable others: the process of identity niching among private employment agencies, employers and migrant domestic workers
    (2024) Tame, Bianca; Sitas, Ari; Xulu-Gama, Nomkhosi
    This thesis explores the process of “identity niching” in the domestic work sector by focusing on the role of and demand for the services of private employment agencies (PEAs) that specialise in placements in Cape Town. The thesis focuses on how Zimbabwean migrant domestic workers' (MDWs) identity as “comfortable others”, which is associated with an ideal type of intimate work culture that employers and PEAs demand, is niched in recruitment and hiring practices. Using a qualitative research approach that included interviews with PEAs, MDWs and employers, and critical ethnography among MDWs, this thesis demonstrates how the demand for comfortable others is met through PEAs but also mobilized by MDWs to access “decent” work. The thesis draws on the cultural formations approach from the South and impression management theory to understand the relevance of intimacy and an intimate work culture in recruitment and hiring processes in post-apartheid South Africa. This thesis argues it is through the agency of employers and PEAs trying to find comfortable others and a seemingly compliant labour force that MDWs are “niched” in relation to South Africans. Further, it is through the agency of MDWs that ethno-cultural preferences associated with an intimate work culture are mobilized to gain employment. Yet how MDWs exercise their agency when mobilizing their intimate work culture, as a defensive combination and through their cultural formation, captures their journey through the underbelly of the domestic sector. Therefore, the findings show that the type of employments paths MDWs choose between, and their domestic work choices, illustrate simultaneous processes of accommodation and agency that are made explicit through the lens of an intimate work culture. It is the practical but publicly informed knowledge gathered through a series of relational but intentional interactions that influence the process of identity niching to meet the demand for comfortable others. However, when examining the different types of domestic work MDWs choose between – and also aspire to – employers that use PEAs appear to be comfortable others too, because they are likely to be labour compliant. Ultimately, the demand for comfortable others can be framed as a response to an “intimate workplace crisis” for PEAs (as employers too), and for employers and domestic workers. Further, the demand for comfortable others is context specific, arising from the particularities of a power-laden domestic employment relationship characterized by the tension between the public and private nature of the intimate workplace that domestic workers and employers iv experience. The analysis of the identity niching process reveals that the socio-legal context and experience of a “crisis of representation” and an “intimate workplace crisis” has given rise to the demand for PEAs in South Africa's post-apartheid domestic sector. The crisis of representation refers to employers' demand for support services in their mostly newfound role as labour compliant employers of domestic workers. For domestic workers, the crisis of representation is symbolic of the atomized nature of domestic work, the rise in underemployment and flexible work arrangements, and low trade union representation. This thesis contributes to making visible PEAs that specialize in placements, a notable departure from research that focuses on PEAs that offer housecleaning services. In addition, this thesis contributes to theorizing intimate work in the domestic sector and examining MDWs' cultural formations as a tool for mobilizing for decent work. The theoretical argument and the findings have potential for understanding the demand for different types and forms of intermediaries in the domestic sector in the context of fostering a culture of legal compliance that benefits domestic workers. The thesis concludes that intimacy is a distinct organizing principle of recruitment and hiring trends that informs the social construction of comfortable others among PEAs, MDWs and employers, and explains the fluid nature of hiring and recruitment patterns in the contemporary intimate workplace.
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    Curriculum Decolonization in the University of Cape Town: Research, Policy and Practice
    (2022) Muraina, Luqman O; Xulu-Gama, Nomkhosi
    Despite seeking a ‘transformation' agenda since the end of apartheid, the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) and South African universities are still unable to displace Western hegemony in higher education. Hence, knowledges and the curriculum are structured along Western epistemological traditions with a strong depiction of African epistemicide. The inability of students to see themselves and be present in Teaching & Learning (T&L) spaces, amidst feelings of alienation and pain expressed through the Fallist movements which started on the University of Cape Town campus and continued in subsequent national and international decolonization uprisings. Since the end of the Fallist protests, research around decolonization has increased, including in UCT. Meanwhile, there are still calls for more practical research on decolonization, including decolonizing classroom spaces. Similarly, the DHET has been critiqued for not creating space for investigating curriculum learning and pedagogies beyond its demographic and economic-oriented ‘transformation' agenda. Lastly, the conversations around UCT's Curriculum Change Framework and its capacity to be implemented as a university-wide curriculum reform ‘framework' motivated the study's broad question - what does curriculum decolonization entail at UCT concerning research, policy, and practice? The study is anchored in a ‘coloniality of knowledge' theoretical orientation and critical qualitative inquiry design. By using a stratified sampling strategy, the UCT staff population were divided into decolonization researchers, university administrators, and lecturers from whom individuals were purposively selected and invited for interviews. A semi-structured qualitative interview instrument was finalized after conducting pilot interviews. The study received ethics approval from the sociology department, and eleven interviews conducted were analysed within a thematic (reflexive) method using NVivo as a systematic resource aid. The thematic framework consisted of five themes: coloniality of knowledge, DHET transformation affairs, UCT decolonization engagements, curriculum decolonization, and putting decolonization into practice. Coloniality of knowledge talks about asymmetrical global knowledge systems structured along racial and gender lines. Curriculum decolonization entails dismantling and rethinking HE amidst curriculum diversity, relationality and promoting indigenous knowledges. The DHET transformation agenda is limited to who is at the university and does not consider whose knowledge, teaching methods, and learning cultures are foregrounded in universities. UCT's decolonization engagements have achieved a few quantitative successes such as changing building names, but much more needs to be done to interrogate Western hegemony, knowledges and culture in the university. A decolonial curriculum frame is the major finding concerning curriculum decolonization theme. It concerns how academic disciplines and lecturers must reflect on how they sustain coloniality in T&L spaces. Finally, decolonization entails pluriversal thinking; hence, a top-to-bottom policymaking approach is detrimental to it. The study recommended that UCT must not adopt neoliberal methods in decolonizing the curriculum. The DHET and UCT must be provocative in dismantling Western education structures and epistemological cultures and embracing ‘Other ways of doing curriculum', including multilingualism. In conclusion, seeking decolonization to be politically right is detrimental to students' sacrifices and intergenerational Black pain.
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    Hostels in South Africa: spaces of perplexity
    (University of KwaZulu Natal Press, 2017) Xulu-Gama, Nomkhosi; Lockhart, Alison
    While the apartheid regime collapsed more than two decades ago, many of the institutions, social processes and problems that characterised that era are, in various forms, still with us today. The African National Congress (ANC) government took power in 1994 and has brought in new people, policies, plans and programmes. However, the social, economic and political problems they inherited were exceedingly complex and the international context often daunting. Likewise, the implementation of new ideas has not always been as efficient or as effective as hoped and many well-intended efforts have not turned out as expected.
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    The exploration of the experiences of alienation in education for rural high school learners in the Eastern Cape province, South Africa
    (2024) Moleko, Teboho Banele; Xulu-Gama, Nomkhosi; Sitas, Ari
    Rural high school learners - learners who attend schools in rural areas - face well-documented macro-level educational challenges: lack of access to social services, poor infrastructure and educational resources, pronounced disadvantage, and limited exposure to experienced teachers. Yet, very little is known about rural high school learners' experiences. Additionally, there is a dearth of information regarding rural high school learners' experiences from their perspectives. To remedy these knowledge gaps, the research was steered by the following questions, “How do rural high school learners in the Eastern Cape experience alienation in education?” “How is rurality framed in education policy, and how does this play a role in alienating rural learners in education?” This thesis used the theory of alienation in education as a guide to uncover the textured, in-depth, contextual experiences of rural learners in the Eastern Cape. More so, this thesis was conducted using qualitative research methodology. The study f