Family, Gender, and Mobility among Passenger Migrants into Colonial Natal: The Story of Moosa Hajee Cassim (c.1840s–1921)

Goolam Vahed

Journal of Southern African Studies, 2016, vol. 42, issue 3, 505-522

Abstract: Moosa Hajee Cassim of Porbandar on the west coast of India arrived in Natal on the south-eastern shore of Africa in 1881 as part of the ‘passenger’ migrant stream that followed in the wake of the recruitment of indentured labourers to the colony. Moosa was deeply involved in the political, economic, social and religious life of Indians in Natal. While there is a growing body of work on indentured migrants, the historiography of passenger Indians (those who came of their own volition) is in its embryonic stage. One reason is the dearth of obvious sources. This article proposes to overcome this limitation through biographical research that draws on archival sources such as estates’ records, immigration department records, court cases, and, where possible, oral history. This partial reconstruction of Moosa Hajee Cassim’s story underscores mobility between Indian Ocean port cities facilitated by new forms of transportation and communication, the strong connection between migrants and their places of origin, and how family and gender migration shaped and reshaped one another. The creative use of multiple archival sources and oral history to construct biographical research on other passenger migrants has the potential to provide a more comprehensive picture of the passenger migrant experience.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03057070.2016.1171557 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cjssxx:v:42:y:2016:i:3:p:505-522

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cjss20

DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2016.1171557

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Southern African Studies is currently edited by Ralph Smith

More articles in Journal of Southern African Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().