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Abstract
The contemporary global condition is one of heightened movement that positions many categories of voluntary migrants as mobile, global subjects who commute across porous borders, weaving back andforth for the purposes of work. Migrants to South Africa comefrom either cross border spaces such as Zimbabwe or Botswana, further Sub-Saharan countries or, as in this case, even further afield such as Gujarat India. When work in the host space does not materialise, that is to say, is not available, many transnational migrants actively create work by turning to opportunities of self-employment as entrepreneurs. This paper works on the understanding that this category of transnational migrants or migrant self-styled and small scale entrepreneurs, are to be understood within a discourse of commoditized labour and against a paradigm of mobilities, where their labour and specific 'skills set' is the active commodity brought to the host country. These non-professional migrants are seen to self-position themselves in the global market (albeit on a small scale) where labour is itself increasingly mobile, flexible, and self-created. This concept paper is exploratory and draws on earlier empirical studies with a small sample community oftransnational migrant entrepreneurs from Gujarat. India who work as barbers or salon artisans. In this paper I reflect on migrant entrepreneurs, micro-entrepreneurship, the informal economy and selfemployment in the context of small scale individualized migration and transnationalIndian migrants.
Key words: migrant, entrepreneurship, informal economies, survivalist
Introduction: Transnational Migrant (Entrepreneur) Travellers and Mobilities
The contemporary global condition is no longer inertial but rather one of heightened movement. The late sociologist John Urry, had over three scholarly decades written extensively on the notion of 'mobilities' (and on what culminated as a paradigm of mobilities in the social sciences). There has been also, in the tenor of general scholarship, much sustained talk about the 'mobility turn' in the social sciences, and of borders made porous by mass communication and the various patterns and push and pull grounded factors of migration. The spectrum of migration, of course spans voluntary movement for economic opportunities as well as the opposite extreme of compelled migrations and displacements due to political unrest and natural disasters. Urry unfolded in his seminal work 'Mobilities' (2007, see also Urry 2002), the many contexts and nuances and situated geo-political realities...