The uncaptured urbanite: Migration and state power in Johannesburg

Such translocalism is transforming the nature of ambition, human interaction, and state power. Whereas Hyden argues that peasants' autonomy from state regulation comes from control of their labour, autonomy for today's urban residents stems from their mobility as a means of escaping economic, coercive, and normative capture by the state.

Drawing on new survey data and in-depth interviews in Johannesburg, South Africa, this paper illustrates how cities are becoming the one site where African states maintain a strong and regularised relationship with citizens and the location of a growing challenge to states authority and power. Ironically, migrants draw many of the opportunities for autonomy from state efforts at regulation. Although migrants and other surplus people have the ability to reconfigure existing patterns of state-society relations, doing so entails considerable risks to themselves and those around them.