The intention of this report is to discuss the links between xenophobic attitudes, gender and male violence by focusing on discussions held with both South African and migrant women and men living in Du Noon, Cape Town. The discussion hopes to highlight the ways that conflict, in the form of xenophobia against the ‘African other’, is mediated by constructions of gender (and sexuality) which rely on notions of otherness and difference. These binaries of difference are articulated in multiple ways in the discourses of South African women and men, and migrant women and men. This paper therefore attempts to foreground the ways that gender (and sexuality) operates to shape the complex relations between migrant and South African men, as well as between migrant and South African women and men.

Nadia Sanger is a senior researcher in the Democracy and Governance research programme at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC).

Nadia Sanger, Interrogating the links between xenophobic attitudes, gender and male violence in Du Noon, Cape Town, 2008.
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