For migrant Zimbabwean women, to live and work in Johannesburg means having to navigate an urban space that reproduces and reinforces their liminality and marginalization. This navigation requires an encounter with the shadows of an unresolved past of spatial inequalities and the colonial exploitation of labour and resources. Migrant women are forced to re-imagine what it means to belong and occupy space in a city that was designed to exploit them. The emergence of xenophobic vigilante groups such as Operation Dudula compounds the lives of migrant women and restricts their practice of belonging and the occupation of space. Neighbourhoods like Hillbrow and Yeoville are an example of migrants seeking refugee amongst other migrants, away from the xenophobic surveillance and vitriol of vigilante groups. These secluded migrant spaces necessitate conviviality and mutual aid as a way of belonging in defiance of the spatial discrimination.