Aspiration, exclusion and belonging in South Africa and Kenya: Introduction

The five articles contained in the thematic section that follows have come out of discussions that were begun at a symposium hosted by the Global Studies programme at Roskilde University in Denmark on 29 & 30 April 2015. The debate was continued half a year later at a workshop organised by WISER at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg on 7 & 8 October 2015, and was rounded off for the time being at a smaller meeting, at which this publication was planned, held in Ilha de Moçambique on 26 & 27 August 2016. The Roskilde symposium brought together an international group of scholars from South Africa, Kenya, Denmark, and the United Kingdom, and focused on ‘Consumerism, regulation and informality in South Africa and Kenya: A discussion of two African settings’. The event was called ‘a symposium’ because presentations were meant to be experimental and to try out new ideas, rather than well-rounded papers summing up the results of research already conducted.