UJ Graduation Programme 13 May 2020 17h00

Sitto, Morwesi Karabo (DLitt et Phil)

Karabo Sitto is a lecturer in the Department of Strategic Communication, Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg. Her research areas of interest include online communication, identity, social representations, as well as teaching and learning. She is the co-editor of Connect: Writing for Online Audiences published by Juta in 2018. Karabo co-authored and led an article published in SOTL in the South, 2(1) titled ‘Reflection on a collaborative teaching project about gender inequality: students learning by doing through transdisciplinarity’. This study highlights the growth of voluntary movements of labour force through globalisation and resultant pressure on economies to compete with one another. This has been evidenced by the exponential rise of degreed migrants who are university-educated, professionally skilled individuals. These voluntary economic migrants choose to move to a destination country for professional opportunities. Adapting to a new social context or setting involves overcoming social representation barriers arising from acculturation schismogenesis. The discussion highlights the similarities of such individuals to other migrants. The challenge for individual migrants is in working to reconstruct their identities (re-identity) in their transnational context to build themselves a new social reality. The time frame of their system, coupling outcomes to reconstruct and stabilise their identity, relied on two critical factors: 1) financial stability and 2) realisation of professional aspirations. Their re-identity processes were simultaneously conscious and subconscious processes in their online/offline interpersonal communication.

Supervisor: Prof S Verwey/Prof S Chiumbu

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