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Racial Desegregation and Schooling in South Africa: Contested Geographies of Class Formation

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  • Mark Hunter

    (Department Social Sciences/Geography, University of Toronto, Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4, Canada; and School of Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal)

Abstract

Much research on racial desegregation in South Africa uses residential data to track how richer black South Africans are moving from apartheid spaces to higher income suburbs; how racial privilege is giving way to class privilege. Drawing on geographers' relational conception of space and anthropologist Sherry Ortner's notion of a ‘class project’, in this paper I show the importance of geographies of schooling to class formation. The study tracks how schools and two groups—township residents and poorer shack residents—affect and navigate access to schools in Durban. Of importance to class formation, the study finds that children of relatively poor, but not the poorest, township dwellers can commute very long distances to attend prestigious schools. Consequently, racial mixing is more evident in South Africa's schools than in its residential areas—the opposite scenario to that found in many other countries. Yet children born to very poor residents of urban informal settlements face considerable barriers when trying to access well-resourced schools: although they are legally entitled to attend prestigious schools located close to informal settlements, they can often live with extended families hundreds of miles away in rural areas. This new geography of schooling leads to the marginalization of some children but the perception of, and potential for, intergenerational class mobility among a quite significant group of black South Africans.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Hunter, 2010. "Racial Desegregation and Schooling in South Africa: Contested Geographies of Class Formation," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 42(11), pages 2640-2657, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:42:y:2010:i:11:p:2640-2657
    DOI: 10.1068/a439
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Servaas van der Berg, 2006. "How effective are poor schools? Poverty and educational outcomes in South Africa," Working Papers 06/2006, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    2. Ronnie Donaldson & Nico Kotze, 2006. "Residential Desegregation Dynamics In The South African City Of Polokwane (Pietersburg)," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 97(5), pages 567-582, December.
    3. Hunter, Mark, 2007. "The changing political economy of sex in South Africa: The significance of unemployment and inequalities to the scale of the AIDS pandemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 689-700, February.
    4. Chris Hamnett & Mark Ramsden & Tim Butler, 2007. "Social Background, Ethnicity, School Composition and Educational Attainment in East London," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 44(7), pages 1255-1280, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Gina Porter & Jeff Turner, 2019. "Meeting Young People’s Mobility and Transport Needs: Review and Prospect," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-23, November.
    2. de Kadt, Julia & van Heerden, Alastair & Richter, Linda & Alvanides, Seraphim, 2019. "Correlates of children’s travel to school in Johannesburg-Soweto—Evidence from the Birth to Twenty Plus (Bt20+) study, South Africa," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 56-67.

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