Enclaving, cosmopolitanism and class-based exclusion in Rosebank

Abstract Rosebank, an upmarket suburb in Johannesburg, attracts residents and visitors with the promise of security, affluence, leisure and global connectivity. Once a racialized enclave during apartheid, Rosebank is today racially diverse and cosmopolitan, yet it remains exclusive. Drawing on the concept of enclaving, we argue that Rosebank is a site of ‘cosmopolitan enclaving’, an ongoing process through which post-apartheid racial inclusion is reworked into class-based differentiation, and one that produces new forms of urban exclusion in contemporary Africa. Using ethnographic research, we trace how this exclusivity emerges through everyday practices of consumption, security, surveillance and mobility. Focusing on intimacy and detachment, we show how belonging appears among those able to perform cosmopolitan competence, while detachment is sustained through architecture, security infrastructures and asymmetrical mobility. Rosebank makes visible how older spatial hierarchies persist in altered forms, now articulated through lifestyle, capital and mobility rather than race. Cosmopolitan enclaving thus illuminates how exclusion in contemporary African cities is increasingly produced through forms of curated openness that rely on and reproduce inequalities.