African Studies Commons^™

No. 46: Voices From The Margins: Migrant Women’S Experiences In Southern Africa, Kate Lefko-Everett

Southern African Migration Programme

The concept of the feminization of migration traditionally refers to the growth in numbers and relative importance of women’s migration, particularly from and within developing countries. In Africa, for example, the proportion of female migrants rose from 42% of the total in 1 960 to almost 50% at the present time. This process is a result, first, of the continued impoverishment and marginalization of many women in developing countries; and second, of the increasing demand for female labour in the service industries of industrial and industrializing countries.

The United Nations suggests that the full implications of migration and mobility for …

No. 21: The Un Convention On The Rights Of Migrant Workers: The Ratification Non-Debate, Vincent Williams, Jonathan Crush, Peggy Nicholson

Southern African Migration Programme

In recognition of the need to explicitly define and uphold the rights of migrants, and in particular migrant workers and their families, the United Nations General Assembly approved the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (ICMW) on 18 December 1990 (Appendix A).

The significance of the Convention has been identified as follows:

• Migrant workers are viewed as more than labourers or economic entities. They are social entities with families and accordingly have rights, including that of family reunification.
• The Convention recognizes that migrant workers and members of their families, …

Vol. 7, No. 1: Deadly Links Between Mobility And Hiv/Aids, Belinda Dodson, Jonathan Crush

Southern African Migration Programme

No abstract provided.

No. 19: Irregular Migration To South Africa During The First Ten Years Of Democracy, Lyndith Waller

Southern African Migration Programme

Irregular migration poses a considerable problem for South Africa in migration management, population planning, infrastructure development, resource management, governance, social services, economic development and security. A government can only work with what it knows, with a reasonable margin of error. By its nature, irregular migration creates many unknowns. Where entry into South Africa is clandestine or fraudulent, no proper account can be kept of the migrant’s presence, movement, identity, nationality, health status or activities. Without the ability to measure the problem, the ability to address it remains elusive.

For years, figures on the number of irregular migrants present in South …

No. 16: South African Immigration Law: A Gender Analysis, Belinda Dodson, Jonathan Crush

Southern African Migration Programme

One of the last pieces of apartheid-era legislation to disappear from the South African statute books was the Aliens Control Act of 1991. Although amended in 1995, this Act was finally consigned to history only in March 2003, when the draft regulations implementing the new Immigration Act (no. 13 of 2002) came into effect (Republic of South Africa 2002 and 2003). While there is much in the new Act to be welcomed, and it certainly represents the advent of a more just and pragmatic immigration regime, many of its provisions give considerable cause for concern on gender grounds. The Act …

No. 43: Migration And Development In Mozambique: Poverty, Inequality And Survival, Fion De Vletter

Southern African Migration Programme

Despite Mozambique’s economic growth rate being one of the highest in Africa over the past few years, much of the growth is linked to the development of highly capital intensive “mega” projects with limited absorption of unskilled workers. The urban informal sector which has hitherto absorbed considerable numbers of the unemployed has become less attractive for the rural labour surpluses as increasing competition makes economic survival more difficult. Such limitations within the domestic economy, recently exacerbated by the current drought in the South, has forced many rural households to seek employment in South Africa. Although external migration to South Africa …

No. 44: Migration, Remittances And Development In Southern Africa, Wade Pendleton, Jonathan Crush, Eugene Campbell, Thuso Green, Hamilton Simelane, Daniel Tevera, Fion De Vletter

Southern African Migration Programme

Remittances by migrants are now a focus of attention of governments and development agencies worldwide. Globally, cash remittances by international migrants now exceed $250 billion per annum, easily outweighing the value of development assistance. Over a third of remittances to developing countries originate in other developing countries. International cash remittances are only part of the story. Remittances in the form of goods and commodities are also extremely important, as are internal remittances from urban to rural areas within countries.

Debate rages on the development impacts of remittances and how these can be maximized. Advocates of migration as a positive force …

No. 17: International Migration And Good Governance In The Southern African Region, Jonathan Crush, Sally Peberdy, Vincent Williams

Southern African Migration Programme

Southern Africa has a long history of intra-regional migration, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. Migration was probably the single most important factor tying together all of the various colonies and countries of the sub-continent into a single regional labour market during the twentieth century. However, entrenched patterns of migration have undergone major restructuring in the last two decades. Southern Africa is now a region on the move (McDonald 2000). Several broader changes underly this shift towards greater and greater intra-regional mobility.

First, the end of apartheid, a system designed to control movement and exclude outsiders, produced new opportunities for …

No. 20: Migration Of Skills In South Africa: Patterns, Trends And Challenges, Lyndith Waller

Southern African Migration Programme

It is a human inclination to want to position oneself where conditions are best for personal fulfilment, growth and success. People migrate because they perceive their environment as inadequate in terms of what they desire or deserve. The more deserving they consider themselves the more likely they will be to leave a suboptimal environment in search of one in which they will be appreciated – through recognition or pay – and where they can develop their potential, live securely, work towards their goals and enjoy standards with which they align themselves.

Skilled people recognise that they have something to offer; …

No. 18: The Draft Protocol On The Facilitation Of Movement Of Persons In Sadc: Implications For State Parties, Vincent Williams, Lizzie Carr

Southern African Migration Programme

The migration of persons across international boundaries in search of better opportunities or as a result of war, conflict and political instability has risen substantially over the years. The UN Population Division estimates that there are currently 175 million people living outside of their country of origin which is more than twice the number a generation ago (United Nations Population Division 2002). As communications and transport infrastructure become more sophisticated and cheaper, this trend is likely to continue in the foreseeable future.

This movement of persons from their own countries of nationality or citizenship, to another country where they take …

No. 2: The Brain Drain Of Health Professionals From Sub-Saharan Africa To Canada, Ronald Labonte, Corinne Packer, Nathan Klassen, Arminee Kazanjian, Lars Apland, Justina Adalikwu, Jonathan Crush, Tom Mcintosh, Ted Schrecker, Joelle Walker, David Zakus

Southern African Migration Programme

Significant numbers of African-trained health workers migrate every year to developed countries including Canada. They leave severely crippled health systems in a region where life expectancy is only 50 years of age, 16 per cent of children die before their fifth birthday and the HIV/AIDS crisis continues to burgeon. The population of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) totals over 660 million, with a ratio of fewer than 13 physicians per 100,000.

SSA has seen a resurgence of various diseases that were thought to be receding, while public health systems remain inadequately staffed. According to one report, the region needs approximately 700,000 physicians …

Vol. 6, No. 2: Harmonisation Of Migration Policies In Sadc States, Vincent Williams, Jonathan Crush

Southern African Migration Programme

No abstract provided.

Vol 6, No. 1: Brain Drain, ‘Major Crisis’ For Southern Africa, Vincent Williams, Jonathan Crush

Southern African Migration Programme

No abstract provided.

No. 15: Migration, Urbanisation And Sustainable Livelihoods In South Africa, Loren Landau

Southern African Migration Programme

Crises present both opportunities and dangers. When facing turmoil in the 1980s, South Africa embraced an aggressive agenda of social, economic, and political transformation. The results are imperfect, but few question the underlying wisdom of this approach. Many of the country’s local and provincial governments now feel they are facing new crises. On one hand, they are empowered to create inclusive, secure, and prosperous cities. On the other, HIV/AIDS and an apparent influx of ‘surplus’ people from around the country and the continent presents the possibility of further economic and political fragmentation (see Tomlinson, et al, 2003; xiii; Landau and …

No. 40: Migration And Domestic Workers: Worlds Of Work, Health And Mobility In Johannesburg, Sally Pederby, Natalya Dinat

Southern African Migration Programme

South Africa is in the middle of a well-documented HIV/AIDS epidemic. Infection rates were calculated to be 22% of the adult population in 2003. A number of different reasons have been advanced to explain the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa. They include poverty and economic marginalization; differing strains of HIV; and high rates of sexually transmitted diseases. However, migration patterns in Southern Africa have also been identified as one of the keys to understanding the high rates of infection in the region. Male migrants have been the focus of research on the relationship between HIV and migration. In the same …

No. 42: States Of Vulnerability: The Future Brain Drain Of Talent To South Africa, Jonathan Crush, Eugene Campbell, Thuso Green, Selma Nangulah, Hamilton Simelane

Southern African Migration Programme

This publication presents the results of SAMP’s 2003 Potential Skills Base survey (PSBS) in four SADC countries. The PSBS was also implemented in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

No. 41: The Quality Of Migration Services Delivery In South Africa, Yul Derek Davids, Kate Lefko-Everett, Vincent Williams

Southern African Migration Programme

The South African Department of Home Affairs (DHA) is responsible for the implementation and management of migration policy and legislation, as well as the registration of births, marriages and deaths and the issuing of identity documents and passports. It is often criticised in the media and in private conversation for being administratively inefficient, cumbersome and unwieldy. South African and foreign customers reportedly regularly complain about the poor quality of services delivered by the Department. Such evidence and media reporting underpins the widelyheld belief that the Department is not easily accessible, is unresponsive to the needs of its customers, is riddled …

No. 13: The Rise Of African Tourism To South Africa, Jonathan Crush, Vincent Williams

Southern African Migration Programme

South Africans display considerable ambiguity if not outright hostility towards Africans from other countries (Crush 2000). The extent of xenophobia was officially recognized in the Immigration Act of 2002 which gives government a statutory obligation to eliminate the phenomenon in its own ranks and amongst the citizenry. Foreign Africans in South Africa are regularly stereotyped as criminals, job-stealers, consumers of scarce public resources and carriers of disease. There is very little recognition of the positive economic benefits of the presence of other Africans in the country.

Africans come to South Africa for a variety of purposes and this needs to …

No. 14: Policing Migration: Immigration Enforcement And Human Rights In South Africa, Jonathan Crush, Vincent Williams

Southern African Migration Programme

This paper examines reported incidents of human rights abuses and violence directed towards foreigners where government employees have been the perpetrators. We discuss both direct human rights abuses and incidents of violence (with examples drawn from policing exercises such as “Operation Crackdown” and from the detention of undocumented migrants) and institutional violence (such as migration policy development and other executive actions promoting or at least failing to prevent victimisation of foreigners). In many of the reported incidents, law enforcement officials have been the direct perpetrators of the human rights violations.

The South African government is legally responsible for ensuring adherence …

No. 12: Nepad, The City And The Migrant: Implications For Urban Governance, Caroline Kihato

Southern African Migration Programme

Migration is a growing phenomenon internationally. Between 1960 and 2000 international migrants in Africa increased from 9 million to 16 million. Although Africa has experienced a drop in the number of international migrants over the last two decades, it has more than double the number of migrants than Latin America and the Caribbean, and between a half and a third of the number in Asia. Flows of people from country to country across the continent are increasingly significant. Migration between cities across the continent is becoming a common phenomenon, as households attempt to secure their livelihoods.

In addition to cross-border …

No. 30: Regionalizing Xenophobia? Citizen Attitudes To Immgration And Refugee Policy In Southern Africa, Jonathan Crush, Wade Pendleton

Southern African Migration Programme

The negative attitudes of South Africans towards non-citizens, migrants and refugees have been documented in several recent studies. Xenophobia has been officially recognized as a major problem by the state and steps have been taken by government and the South African Human Rights Commission to “roll back xenophobia.” Since anti-immigrant intolerance is a global phenomenon, should South Africans be singled out in this regard? This paper seeks to contextualize the South African situation by comparing the attitudes of South Africans with citizens from several other countries in the SADC; namely, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.

In practical policy terms, …

No. 11: Regionalizing International Migration: Lessons For Sadc, Jonathan Crush, Vincent Williams

Southern African Migration Programme

Research on unauthorised migration to South Africa has addressed a range of issues surrounding the effects of current immigration policy on migrants, and the impact migrants have on South Africa’s society and economy (DHA 1997: section 1.4.6). One finding that is particularly relevant to a discussion of regional labour migration regimes is that current South African immigration policy does not account for labour migrants who retain a social and domestic base in their countries of origin. Another is that most unauthorised migrants are temporary or contract workers who seek employment in industries—such as construction—that depend increasingly on this kind of …

No. 29: The New Brain Drain From Zimbabwe, Daniel S. Tevara, Jonathan Crush

Southern African Migration Programme

All the signs point to the existence of a growing exodus of skilled Zimbabweans from the country. Although the precise dimensions and impacts of this “brain drain” have yet to be determined, the Zimbabwean government has recently sought to stem the tide with various policy measures. The education and health sectors appear to be the hardest hit although professionals in other sectors have also been leaving in numbers.

The Southern African Migration Project (SAMP) has undertaken a multi-country study of the brain drain within and from the Southern African Development Community (SADC). SAMP’s primary contribution is to examine the skills …

No. 28:Changing Attitudes To Immigration And Refugee Policy In Botswana, Eugene Campbell, Johan Oucho

Southern African Migration Programme

For the last two decades, Botswana has had the reputation as a “country of immigration,” based on the large-scale import of skilled expatriates from Africa, Asia and the West. Successive census reports and immigration data, as well as previous SAMP surveys undertaken in the late 1990s, confirm the appropriateness of the designation. The SAMP surveys concentrated on three themes: (a) the attitudes and migration behaviour of skilled foreigners in the country; (b) the attitudes of Batswana towards cross-border migration to South Africa; and (c) the emigration potential of skilled Batswana. The surveys highlighted the tolerant and generally welcoming attitude prevailing …

No. 10: Criminal Tendencies: Immigrants And Illegality In South Africa, Jonathan Crush, Vincent Williams

Southern African Migration Programme

South Africans believe that immigrants are largely responsible for the post-1994 crime wave in the country. In a national survey of South African citizens conducted recently by the Southern African Migration Project (SAMP), for example, respondents were asked what, if anything, they had to fear about people from neighbouring countries (McDonald 2000: 209). Almost half the population (48%) felt that migrants were a “criminal threat” (compared to 37% who thought they were a threat to jobs and the economy, and 29% who thought they were a health threat). The simplistic, and largely unsubstantiated, association of foreignness with criminality, job-stealing and …

No. 24: Spaces Of Vulnerability: Migration And Hiv/Aids In South Africa, Brian Williams, Eleanor Gouws, Mark Lurie, Jonathan Crush

Southern African Migration Programme

Seventy per cent of the 36 million people infected worldwide with HIV live in Sub-Saharan Africa and within this region the countries of Southern Africa are the worst affected. The eight countries with the highest rates of infection are in Southern Africa, followed by six countries in East Africa, and then five other countries, only one outside Africa. The reasons why the highest rates of infection in the world occur in Southern Africa are unclear. Although the countries of the region have much in common, their histories over the last twenty years have been very different.

A number of different …

No. 23: Gender And The Brain Drain From South Africa, Belinda Dodson

Southern African Migration Programme

South Africa is experiencing a substantial “brain drain”, underestimated in official emigration statistics. Yet there is uncertainty over issues such as why some leave and others stay, whether people who leave do so for good, and whether the brain drain will accelerate in the future. The surveys upon which this paper is based aimed to add some substance to the debate on the loss of core skills to the South African economy. They present a profile of the skilled population of South Africa and provide some insight into the factors determining emigration potential. Two distinct surveys were conducted: one of …

No. 25: Zimbabweans Who Move: Perspectives On International Migration In Zimbabwe, Daniel Tevara, Lovemore Zinyama

Southern African Migration Programme

The movement of people across political boundaries has generated considerable debate in Southern Africa. There is a compelling need for Southern African countries to harmonise regional migration policies and to ensure the freer movement of people across the region. However, it must be noted that disparities in levels of development are still evident in the economies of the region. There are fears in countries such as South Africa and Botswana that the freer movement of people will flood them with migrants from the less developed countries. There are also concerns in all the countries of SADC that freer movement will …

No. 09: Transnationalism And African Immigration To South Africa, Jonathan Crush, Vincent Williams

Southern African Migration Programme

The demise of formal apartheid has created new and as yet only partially understood opportunities for migration to South Africa. Legal migration from other Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, for example, has increased almost ten-fold since 1990 to over four million visitors per year. South Africa’s (re)insertion into the global economy has brought new streams of legal and undocumented migrants from outside the SADC region and new ethnic constellations within. The easing of legal and unauthorized entry to South Africa has made the country a new destination for African asylum-seekers, long-distance traders, entrepreneurs, students and professionals (Bouillon 1996; Saasa …

No. 07: Evaluating Refugee Protection In South Africa, Jonathan Crush, Vincent Williams

Southern African Migration Programme

South Africa’s policy on refugees has its origins in the country’s much-criticized Aliens Control Act (96 of 1991) (ACA), which in numerous respects has failed to provide adequate guarantees to applicants (de la Hunt 1998,2002: 123; Human Rights Watch 1998:170; Handmaker 1999a, 1999b). Until the recent implementation of its first ever Refugees Act (Act 130 of 1998) in April 2000, South Africa’s policy on refugees depended on the ACA, with the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) responsible for enforcement.

This paper evaluates the process of refugee policy reform that began in 1996. This process led to the Refugees Act in …