Poor whites, play-whites and deurmekaar people : lives on the colour line in segregated Cape Town
(2025)
- Author
- Natan De Coster (UGent)
- Promoter
- Koenraad Bogaert (UGent) and Kelly Gillespie
- Organization
- Project
- Abstract
- Just a stone’s throw from Cape Town’s historic city centre and docklands lies Brooklyn, a small suburban enclave founded in 1930 as one of the city’s first experiments in residential segregation. Conceived as a place to rehabilitate and uplift indigent White workers and their families, the settlement instead gained a reputation as a deurmekaar place: not ‘right,’ not ‘respectable,’ and not quite white either. A vivid work of urban social history, Poor Whites, Play-Whites, and Deurmekaar People tells the story of segregation from below—and from apartheid’s categorical borderlands. Narrating the experiences of dockworkers and sex workers, grandmothers and gangsters, Portchies and play-whites, the book brings to life the ways apartheid’s grand ambitions collided with the entangled social world of Cape Town’s docklands.
- Keywords
- Social urban history, Apartheid, Cape Town, Whiteness, Histories across the colour line
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Citation
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication: http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-01KBD8QEKQ6TDR64SE1FTV5ZAP
- MLA
- De Coster, Natan. Poor Whites, Play-Whites and Deurmekaar People : Lives on the Colour Line in Segregated Cape Town. Ghent University. Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, 2025.
- APA
- De Coster, N. (2025). Poor whites, play-whites and deurmekaar people : lives on the colour line in segregated Cape Town. Ghent University. Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Ghent, Belgium.
- Chicago author-date
- De Coster, Natan. 2025. “Poor Whites, Play-Whites and Deurmekaar People : Lives on the Colour Line in Segregated Cape Town.” Ghent, Belgium: Ghent University. Faculty of Political and Social Sciences.
- Chicago author-date (all authors)
- De Coster, Natan. 2025. “Poor Whites, Play-Whites and Deurmekaar People : Lives on the Colour Line in Segregated Cape Town.” Ghent, Belgium: Ghent University. Faculty of Political and Social Sciences.
- Vancouver
- 1.De Coster N. Poor whites, play-whites and deurmekaar people : lives on the colour line in segregated Cape Town. [Ghent, Belgium]: Ghent University. Faculty of Political and Social Sciences; 2025.
- IEEE
- [1]N. De Coster, “Poor whites, play-whites and deurmekaar people : lives on the colour line in segregated Cape Town,” Ghent University. Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Ghent, Belgium, 2025.
@phdthesis{01KBD8QEKQ6TDR64SE1FTV5ZAP,
abstract = {{Just a stone’s throw from Cape Town’s historic city centre and docklands lies Brooklyn, a small suburban enclave founded in 1930 as one of the city’s first experiments in residential segregation. Conceived as a place to rehabilitate and uplift indigent White workers and their families, the settlement instead gained a reputation as a deurmekaar place: not ‘right,’ not ‘respectable,’ and not quite white either.
A vivid work of urban social history, Poor Whites, Play-Whites, and Deurmekaar People tells the story of segregation from below—and from apartheid’s categorical borderlands. Narrating the experiences of dockworkers and sex workers, grandmothers and gangsters, Portchies and play-whites, the book brings to life the ways apartheid’s grand ambitions collided with the entangled social world of Cape Town’s docklands.}},
author = {{De Coster, Natan}},
keywords = {{Social urban history,Apartheid,Cape Town,Whiteness,Histories across the colour line}},
language = {{eng}},
pages = {{XI, 586}},
publisher = {{Ghent University. Faculty of Political and Social Sciences}},
school = {{Ghent University}},
title = {{Poor whites, play-whites and deurmekaar people : lives on the colour line in segregated Cape Town}},
year = {{2025}},
}