Samuel Giraut is a PhD Candidate in Urban Studies at the University of Basel, supported by a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) grant under the Doc.CH funding scheme. His research is an ethnographic inquiry into socio-spatial transformation unfolding at the nexus of transnational migration, platformisation and urban renewal in the shifting urban context of post-apartheid South Africa. His PhD project attends to the livelihood and spatial strategies of African migrant workers and entrepreneurs as they bridge e-hailing with diverse economic activities. Focusing on a single neighbourhood in the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town, the project examines how platform labour, migrant entrepreneurship, and residential strategies intersect in the production of new contested urban forms, thereby questioning notions of place-making and settlement as migrants navigate mounting global xenophobia.

Samuel is also interested in the geography of legacy connectivity infrastructure and colonial durabilities, contributing to a body of work developed with colleagues at the African Centre for Cities that traces the making of Cape Town into a digital gateway and its (dis)articulation with economic processes spanning colonial and post-colonial conjunctures.

Prior to starting his PhD, Samuel participated in the GRAPHITE action-research project ("Youth and the City") with the LPED research laboratory (Aix-Marseille University). He has also been active in civil society in Marseille, where he worked in a grassroots space addressing issues of discrimination and social inequality. Samuel holds a BSc in Geography from Bordeaux Montaigne University. In 2021, he graduated with a Master's in Geopolitics and Political Geography from the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne.

• Platform Labor and Migrant Economies
• Temporariness, mobility, and urban place-making
• Digital infrastructure and connectivity
• Colonial legacies, postcoloniality, and the urban

• South Africa
• Cape Town