Drawing on ethnographic data, this article explores migrant womens relationships and encounters with the state in South Africas largest city, Johannesburg. Focusing on the experiences of people in this marginal location, the article re-examines the notion of 'urban governance', which is often understood as the realm of formal urban institutions in which the state asserts its authority and regulatory powers. Through the everyday lives of migrant women we see that local urban practices are not simply shaped by the formalism of state rules and regulations, or their informal illegal counterparts. The way migrant women navigate the city, trade on the streets, and interact with the state and other urban actors illustrates that governance is co-constructed by a multitude of regimes, legal and illegal, visible and invisible. Indeed, womens lives collapse the dichotomy of the official and unofficial, governed and ungoverned city, in ways that allow us to rethink how we conceptualise the city. © 2011 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Gender Marginality co-constructed urban spaces everyday practices urban governance

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