Coping mechanisms of migrants in South Africa: A case study of Nigerian women in Durban.

It is evident from movies and social media discussions that coping mechanisms are conceived as a common lifestyle. However, coping mechanism is much more than a lifestyle to migrants, given that they also see it as a survival mechanism. In spite of this, not much scholarly attention has been devoted to migrant’s use of coping mechanisms. Through the purposive sampling technique, this paper attempts to examine the theme of coping mechanisms of immigrants using Nigerian immigrant women in Durban as a case study vis-à-vis their relevance to adaptation in foreign land. The study employs the intersectionality theory to capture the experience of Nigerian women. The findings show that the Nigerian immigrant women in Durban have experimented with a number of coping techniques at the individual and group levels. These range from learning the indigenous language to acquiring new skills that will help them extend social networks through utilising social support schemes and any other identified virtue from immigrant home culture. The paper concludes that their challenges stem from navigating the complexities of two spatial worldviews (those of their host country and those of their homeland), which also impacts how they adapt to these complexities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]