Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Well because of my grandfather being born in the UK, I'm allowed to get
an ancestral visa. So that's what I'm working on at the moment, and I in-
tend to do caring work, once I get there.
Francine:
Max:
OK, and why are you planning to leave?
Becauseofmyfinancialsituation.Ican'treallyseemyselflastingherefin-
ancially. Because I don't have the income.
Francine:
Francine has been recruited as a locum providing semicasualized home health care to
seniors in the UK. So we can see here how visa arrangements have allowed for the im-
port of low-cost social reproductive labor (see Misra, Woodring, and Merz 2006), but,
in addition, for Francine, attaining access to the UK through her ancestry has become a
crucialmechanismthroughwhichshehopestobeabletomaintainamiddle-classstand-
ard of living that she implicitly associates with her whiteness.
In this way we can see how, in contrast to much recent work on transnationalism, es-
pecially of the “middling” variety (Conradson and Latham 2005), mobility associated
with the visa whiteness machine is not confined to elites but applies equally to all who
can prove UK descent and thus allows South Africans to negotiate the spaces between
very different political and economic conjectures in the north and south. South Africans
who stay in the UK for the full four years on their ancestral visa can then apply for in-
definite leave to remain and, if they choose, shortly thereafter, a British passport, which
would enable complete ease of movement between the two countries:
I have ancestry to the United Kingdom, that was how I landed up in the
UK. Through my paternal grandmother.
Cicely:
Max:
OK, so you used an ancestral visa.
I went on an ancestral visa, which was four years. I stayed for four and a
half years, because at the end of four years I wasn't ready to come home
yet, so I asked for indefinite leave to remain. So I have an indefinite leave
to remain in my passport.
Cicely:
Max:
So you can go back anytime?
BornandbredSouthAfrican.…Iwouldn'tchangemySouthAfricanpass-
port for an English one.
Cicely:
Cicely thus demonstrates how the need to make emotional decisions such as the ac-
quisitionofforeigncitizenshipisobviatedastheattainmentofindefiniteleavetoremain
means a passport is not even required to facilitate continuous mobility between South
Africa and the UK.
