This project extends my interest in the labour of non-national workforces to a new field site - migrant food couriers in Cape Town.

This project explores how workers navigate food delivery labour – challenged across the country and the world for its ‘adverse inclusion’ – in a city where their presence as non-nationals is also contested. It asks, how does the labour regime of food delivery shape the lives of its workers? How do these dynamics intersect with the relegated economic, social and political positions migrants occupy in South Africa? And how do migrant couriers assess and respond to these perils and promises? Through sustained and sensitive ethnography, this research hopes to advance nuanced understandings of food delivery work and African non-nationals lived experiences from the backs of motorbikes in Cape Town, contributing to regional and global debates across the fields of anthropology and migration studies.