‘Ethnic Enclave of a Special Sort?’ Mozambicans in La Rochelle, Johannesburg

Although Mozambican migration to South Africa has a long history, it is only recently that scholarly literature has begun to shift slightly from the defining albatross of the contract labour migration system to provide a much more incisive analysis of the everyday circumstances of individual migrants. Focusing on the suburb of La Rochelle in Johannesburg, we argue that, while this shift represents an important insight for migration research, it remains particularly thin on matters of urban space and migrant spatial decision-making. We look at the spatial presence of Mozambicans in La Rochelle, use property-ownership and interview data to engage in the global discourse on ethnic enclaves, and discuss the peculiar circumstances of the development and life cycle of Johannesburg's La Rochelle ethnic enclave. Our findings suggest that the Portuguese language has remained central to the development of La Rochelle as an ethnic enclave, though the suburb has taken an atypical trajectory since the end of apartheid that hardly fits the traditional ethnic enclave classification. Importantly, immigrants who move into ethnic enclaves often establish a permanent presence, but the Mozambicans in La Rochelle have forms of permanence in aggregate terms only, as the individual migrants remain transient within La Rochelle and the greater Rosettenville area.