This paper takes as its subject a series of contingent mixed-use urban markets that have been established in Cape Town, South Africa, by migrants, refugees and asylum seekers from various parts of the African continent. It argues that migrant spaces are historically and spatially situated, and constructed both by their wider urban context and the specifics of the patterns of forced migration. In South Africa, the literature on migrant spaces has largely focused on inner-city Johannesburg, emphasizing the creativity of spatial practices. This paper focuses on emerging pan-African markets created by migrants in the northern Cape Town suburb of Bellville. The paper adopts Walter Benjamin’s approach of “writing the arcades” in order to read the spaces of these markets through a complementary method of spatial ethnography and archival research. This research approach is grounded in the broader anthropological approaches and architectural fieldwork methods. The resultant multi-scalar reading of informal migrant markets, not usually found in spatial archives, questions dominant readings of formality and informality in postcolonial contexts.

本文以非洲开普敦在南非开普敦建立的一系列偶然的多功能城市市场为主题，这些市场是来自非洲大陆各地的移民，难民和寻求庇护者。它认为移民空间在历史和空间上都处于位置，并且由其更广阔的城市环境和强迫移民模式的特定性所构成。在南非，关于移民空间的文献主要集中在约翰内斯堡市中心，强调了空间实践的创造力。本文重点介绍由北开普敦郊区贝尔维尔郊区的移民创造的新兴泛非市场。本文采用沃尔特·本杰明（Walter Benjamin）的“书写商场”方法，以通过空间人种志和档案研究的补充方法来读取这些市场的空间。该研究方法以更广泛的人类学方法和建筑实地考察方法为基础。由此产生的对非正规移民市场的多尺度阅读（通常在空间档案中找不到）质疑了后殖民背景下对形式和非正规性的主流解读。