PhD defence Tinashe Chimbidzikai - Aspirations in flux: Pentecostalism and the everyday (re)shaping of middle-class identities among Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa

On 13 October, Tinashe Chimbidzikai will defend his dissertation Aspirations in flux: Pentecostalism and the everyday (re)shaping of middle-class identities among Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa.

The dissertation examines how Zimbabwean Pentecostal migrants in Johannesburg, South Africa navigate prolonged uncertainty as they pursue middle-class aspirations in a context marked by insecure legal status, labour insecurity, and social exclusion. The central research question is: how do religious practices and moral frameworks shape the ways migrants sustain hope, manage uncertainty, and negotiate belonging under constrained conditions in Johannesburg? By addressing this question, the dissertation contributes to debates in the sociology of religion, migration studies, and African studies through its conceptualisation of “hoping as coping.” The concept foregrounds hope as an everyday, socially produced strategy through which migrants manage waiting, disappointment, and constraint while continuing to orient themselves towards future goals shaped by aspirations for social and economic advancement. The study focuses on Zimbabwean migrants who identify as, or aspire to be, middle class. Rather than treating the middle class as a stable socio-economic category, the dissertation approaches middle-classing as a fragile, performative, and moral process. Migrants’ aspirations for stability, respectability, and progress are continuously negotiated through everyday practices of work, consumption, religious participation, and how individuals present themselves in social and public settings. These aspirations unfold within a post-apartheid urban environment characterised by superdiversity, xenophobia, fragmented labour markets, and restrictive migration governance.