The particular aspect that I wish to explore is how do those migrants who are Muslim, find ways in which Islam (or being Muslim), a foreign national and a migrant counts as useful or has some cachet, in making a new life primarily focused on livelihood and accommodation strategies, while simultaneously being transnational migrants in a set of historical contingencies that are fraught with multiple difficulties, not least of which is sufficient remittances to their homes in their countries of origin. Given the constitutional space to practice religion unhindered, many local Muslims in South Africa began to focus on values of piety and morality, rather than continue to engage in the larger public debates about recognition of cultural differences and the relevance of Islam in times of continued inequality, nation building, reconciliation, reconstruction and development2. [...]in this paper I want to understand the specific use of the content of religious, as well as ethnic and national identities in so far as they are imbricated in the issues I address, to inform decisions that have a direct bearing on everyday practices of migrants, in particular their ability to articulate and carve out a space to provide for themselves in Durban through their creativity and manipulations of what exists and confronts them as a multitude of institutions and power structures. There is a growing literature that takes seriously these African practices in an era of large scale economic and political transformation driven by structural adjustments, trade regulation or deregulation, fiscal austerity packages, post-cold war demands for democratization, or of notions of post- colonial state failure or political instability, assuming that we know what is a successful post-colonial state or political stability (Mbembe 1992; 2001).