Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
offer to South Africans constitutes a machine that attracts and repels bodies, and that
whiteness emerges out of the workings of this visa whiteness machine.
Saldanha writes, “From a machinic perspective, race is not something inscribed upon
or referring to bodies, but a particular spatiotemporal disciplining and charging of those
bodies themselves” (2007, 190). Thus the material arrangement of where bodies can be
is as important, if not more so, than how racialized identity is mediated through dis-
course. Valerie here illustrates well the way in which she and her boyfriend (later hus-
band) ended up in London because it happened to be a path open to her, by virtue of her
ancestry, a path that exerted a financial pull of its own:
For us, it was never really about living in London. It was just about living
somewhere and earning an income. We didn't choose to go to London be-
cause we liked living there, or particular experience. I mean, we always
talk about the weather in the UK.
Valerie:
Max:
It was just the path that was available?
Yes, ja, ja. I would say from, a salary point of view, money got us there in
the first place.
Valerie:
Valerie and her partner moved to London not in order to “shore up” their whiteness
in some abstract sense by returning to the imperial center. In fact they didn't even really
likeLondon.ThedrawofLondon'seconomyandtheculturalcapitalaffordedtothemas
beneficiaries of apartheid were central to their decision to migrate transnationally, but,
inthefinalanalysis,ValerieandherpartnermovedtotheUKbecause,thankstothevisa
whiteness machine, they could.
Context
This research is part of a wider project on the transnational practices of white South
Africans. A series of in-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted in and around
Durban with white South Africans who had experience living overseas at some point in
theirlivesbutwerecurrentlyresidinginSouthAfrica.Durbanisanindustrialcityofap-
proximately 3 million, and its hinterland, the former British colony of Natal, is the only
region of South Africa where English speakers constitute a majority amongst whites (as
well as Coloureds). The white population of the former province of Natal (since 1994
merged with the former homeland into the province of KwaZulu-Natal) is renowned
for its staunch history of loyalism, royalism, and even separatism before and during the
apartheid period. Even after South Africa became a republic in 1961, Natal was often
dubbed“TheLastOutpostoftheBritishEmpire”(Thompson1990).Roughlyhalfofall
