22 research outputs found

    Epidemiology of Malaria in an Area Prepared for Clinical Trials in Korogwe, North-eastern Tanzania.

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    Site preparation is a pre-requesite in conducting malaria vaccines trials. This study was conducted in 12 villages to determine malariometric indices and associated risk factors, during long and short rainy seasons, in an area with varying malaria transmission intensities in Korogwe district, Tanzania. Four villages had passive case detection (PCD) of fever system using village health workers. Four malariometric cross-sectional surveys were conducted between November 2005 and May 2007 among individuals aged 0-19 years, living in lowland urban, lowland rural and highland strata. A total of 10,766 blood samples were collected for malaria parasite diagnosis and anaemia estimation. Blood smears were stained with Giemsa while haemoglobin level was measured by HaemoCue. Socio-economic data were collected between Jan-Apr 2006. Adjusting for the effect of age, the risk of Plasmodium falciparum parasitaemia was significantly lower in both lowland urban, (OR = 0.26; 95%CI: 0.23-0.29, p < 0.001) and highlands, (OR = 0.21; 95%CI: 0.17-0.25, p < 0.001) compared to lowland rural. Individuals aged 6-9 years in the lowland rural and 4-19 years in both lowland urban and highlands had the highest parasite prevalence, whilst children below five years in all strata had the highest parasite density. Prevalence of splenomegaly and gametocyte were also lower in both lowland urban and highlands than in lowland rural. Anaemia (Hb <11 g/dl) prevalence was lowest in the lowland urban. Availability of PCD and higher socio-economic status (SES) were associated with reduced malaria and anaemia prevalence. Higher SES and use of bed nets in the lowland urban could be the important factors for low malaria infections in this stratum. Results obtained here were used together with those from PCD and DSS in selecting a village for Phase 1b MSP3 vaccine trial, which was conducted in the study area in year 2008

    Social Control in Transnational Families: Somali Women and Dignity in Johannesburg

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    Transnational mobility often separates families and distances individuals from the kinship and social structures by which they organized their lives prior to migration. Myriad forms of insecurity have been the impetus for Somali movement into the diaspora, with people fleeing the realities of conflict that have marked Somalia for decades while physically dividing families as individuals settle in different countries around the world. Mobility has altered the dynamics of households, families, and communities post-migration, reshaping social constructions as individuals move on without the familial support that sustained them in Somalia. While outcomes of these hardships are variable and often uneven in different settlement spaces, migration can offer new opportunities for people to pursue avenues from which they were previously excluded, such as by assuming roles and responsibilities their relatives once filled. These changes precipitate shifting identities and are challenging for women who find themselves self-reliant in the diaspora, particularly in the absence of (supportive) husbands and close kin.Drawing on ethnographic research in Johannesburg’s Somali community, this chapter explores the assumption that migration provides an opening for women to challenge subordinating gender norms. Settlement often grants women greater freedom to make choices in their lives, such as in employment and personal relationships, and yet they remain constrained by networks that limit their autonomy. Even with transnational migration and protracted separation, women are family representatives who must uphold cultural notions of respectability despite realities that position them as guardians and family providers. Women remain under the watchful eye of their extended families through expansive networks and the ease of modern communication, which facilitate a new form of social control as women’s behavior is carefully monitored and reported to relatives afar. These actualities raise questions about the degree to which transnational movement is a liberating force for women or rather a reconfiguration of social control. I argue that despite women’s changing position in their households and families, they remain limited by social control within their extended families and communities

    ‘Running them out of time:’ xenophobia, violence, and co-authoring spatiotemporal exclusion in South Africa

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    Immigration governance scholars often focus on formal, national regulations and how local implementation and resistance rations access to space and resources. Research into ‘xenophobic’ exclusion across South Africa suggests recalibrating research along two spatial and temporal dimensions. First, while legal and political discourse often evoke national principles, exclusive speech and action can be highly spatialised and distinctly sub-national. Consequently, people objectively belonging to the same, excludable category (e.g., international migrants; sexual or ethnic minorities) face varied vulnerabilities corresponding to where they work or reside. Moreover, when mobilising nationalistic discourses of exclusion and belonging, sub-national actors customise and emplace them. Such co-authoring infuses them with particularistic interests and language while imposing spatial limits on their legitimacy. This in turn generates a dynamic patchwork of regulatory regimes where local variations may be more practically important than national policy. Second, the effects of co-authored exclusion are spatial, but their foundations may be temporal. South Africa’s national political project rests on forms of restorative justice: of building futures for those materially disadvantaged and disenfranchised by Apartheid’s racist machinations. For South Africans, making claims to a future in place (i.e., in the country or a given site) are predicated on one’s position in this national temporal arc. Even if apartheid disadvantaged millions across Southern African, non-citizens are historiographically excluded from these claims. Immigrants are, in effect, run out of time. By eliding shared pasts, officials and citizens deny the possibility of a spatial future shared with non-nationals. These elements help explain the popular legitimacy of anti-immigrant mobilisation and surface the multiple modes of citizenship and exclusion operating across the country. Recognising this, the article ultimately encourages scholars to re-spatialise and temporalise the study of migration governance in ways that also recognise the dialogical dimensions of bordering and emplacement

    Xenophobic Violence and Struggle Discourse in South Africa.

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    This paper argues that xenophobia in South Africa is entangled in discourses of liberation struggle, which are often used to justify anti-foreigner violence. We first examine some existing academic explanations for xenophobia, namely internalised racism, poverty/inequality, nationalism, and township and informal settlement politics. To avoid deterministically explaining xenophobia as ‘caused’ by any of these factors, however, we introduce a concept from social psychology, the concept of ‘working models of contact’. These are common frames of reference in which contact between groups is understood in terms of shared meanings and values. Xenophobic violence is not caused but instantiated in ways that are explained and justified according to particular understandings of the meaning of the ‘citizen-foreigner’ relationship. We then review three case studies of xenophobic violence whose perpetrators constructed a model of contact in which African ‘foreigners’ were undermining the struggles of South Africans in various socio-economic contexts. We also examine three cases where xenophobic violence was actively discouraged by invoking an inclusive rather than divisive form of struggle discourse. Thus the nature of the struggle itself becomes contested. We conclude by considering some dilemmatic implications that our analysis provokes
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