| This thesis relates a narrative of changes in the immigration policies of the South African state between 1910 and 1997. It provides the first comprehensive study of the historical geography of immigration to South Africa in the twentieth century and the legislation, policies and practices which shaped it. The study moves away from a mechanical recounting of geographies of immigration by critically examining the relationship between changes in South Africa's immigration policies and shifts in the construction of national identity by the South African state at particular historical moments. These tend to coincide with those periods when South Africa underwent major changes in its nation-building project. Examining the reciprocal relationship between state policies and practices of inclusion and exclusion and the changing construction of national identity it interrogates the development of successive South African nationalisms.;Woven through the discussion are two subsidiary themes. The first, explores the way that the metaphors of state discourses construct the nation as an anthropomorphized body. At different times, related to the shifting constructions of South African national identity, the state has seen particular groups of immigrants as potential contaminators of the metaphorical physical body of the nation and metaphysical body of the nation, or its mind, soul, and body politic. The second theme investigates how immigration statistics, and the ways that immigrants are displayed and ordered in immigration returns reflect the power/knowledge nexus in the project of governance of the South African state as well as the changing constructions of South African national identity. |
