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Universities worldwide have seen an expansion of students. We surveyed 1,193 students at the University of the Free State and conducted interviews and focus groups to better understand the factors that contribute to housing satisfaction. Satisfaction depended on a range of environmental factors, particularly noise levels, rules, security, privacy, and the standard of maintenance, rather than on the norms and standards that relate to design issues. The on-campus respondents were doing better academically and socially.

The declaration of Covid-19 as a global pandemic on 11 March, 2020, and the disaster management regulations implemented in reply to it had enormous ramifications on ethnographic fieldwork. This situation presented an opportunity to reconsider the methodology used in a research project on lived experiences of childhood health and well-being in Free State province, South Africa. This study explores the argument that technology can establish a virtual space that fieldworker and research participant can treat as “real.” It uses fieldwork diaries and insights to evaluate the benefits and disadvantages of telephonic virtual conversations as a replacement for conventional face-to-face fieldwork to access inaccessible fieldwork sites. It adopts a reflexive qualitative case-study approach to document the experiences of two fieldworkers moving from on-site fieldwork to telephone voice calls to conduct their research. By offering a reflexive account of these technology-mediated fieldwork experiences, this article proposes this methodology as possible alternative to documenting lived experience. Lessons from this experience can contribute to reviewing the traditional practice of ethnographic fieldwork and imagining alternative and complementary methodological possibilities.

•Mine decline and closure may have particular social costs for women.•The burden of caring for the household has increased under mine decline.•Decline affects women despite improvements in political and economic rights.•Mine decline reinforces inequalities for these African women.•Mine decline has hidden social cost for women.

•Mine closure challenges the development approach of the Africa Mining Vision.•Respondents where mines have closed remain poorer than the control group.•Respondents where the mines have closed have restricted mobility.•Areas where mines close have higher levels of social disruption.

ABSTRACTThis article brings together two sets of literature: that on migrant labour and that on mine closures. We argue that while the literature has highlighted the inhumane nature of migrant labour, few researchers have reflected on settlement in mining areas in relation to mine expansion and/or the subsequent implications of mine down-scaling. This article refers to two case studies of mining and migrant labour in South Africa. In the first case study, we explore the impacts of mine closure in the Free State Goldfields and argue that migrant labour was, to some extent, a blessing in disguise for the area. In the second case study of the new iron-ore mining area of Kathu, Northern Cape Province, we explore housing developments and argue that many of the same mistakes that occurred in places like the Free State Goldfields are being made in an attempt to reduce the impact of migrant labour.

•Research generally depicts place attachment in a positive light.•Our study suggests attachments in mining are complex and multi-faceted.•Attachments can create financial lock-ins with damaging long-term effects.•Policies that induce place attachment ought to be treated with caution.