Stanford Taonatose Mahati

Stanford holds a BSc Honours and MPhil in Sociology and Social Anthropology from the University of Zimbabwe. He has worked as a researcher for Blair Research Institute and Biomedical Research and Training Institute in Zimbabwe. He has participated in several projects which focus on orphans and vulnerable children including migrant populations. His research interests are child migration, HIV/AIDS and rural livelihoods and his doctoral study is on the representation of unaccompanied migrant children.

Independent migrant children occupy an important but precarious position in cross-border movements in Southern Africa. In response to this situation a number of interventions are being implemented in South Africa aimed at assisting them.

The central questions of Stanford Mahati’s doctoral study are: What are the predominant representations of independent migrant children that service providers bring to bear on their interactions with these young people, and how are these generated, reproduced and disseminated? Also of interest to the dissertation is how these representations affect the mode and outcome of interactions between independent child migrants and those service providers.

Email: stmahati@yahoo.co.uk