Migration in southern Africa – a visit to the City of Migrants

by Eva-Maria Egger

I spent three weeks in July and August this year in South Africa visiting researchers at the University of Cape Town and the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg as part of an exchange program funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). It gave me the opportunity to work with the data from the Migrating out of Poverty household survey collected in Zimbabwe earlier this year, while I was in the region which many of the migrants in the survey chose as their destination. But around this academic experience I also had the chance to see the two largest cities of the country and meet people who live and chose to live in them.

When you go to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg you can see historical documents illustrating the history and presence of immigration to Johannesburg and South Africa from all over the world. Johannesburg, the City of Gold, is also the City of Migrants. In the past the discovery of gold attracted many people from within and outside the country’s borders to come to Johannesburg and build a new life. Today vast economic opportunities attract the migrants. Not only can you see the factories and office buildings of various international companies in the city, but also a wide range of African shops run by people from all over the continent. This international mix, in combination with high unemployment among South Africans, was the backdrop to the violent xenophobic outbreaks after the World Cup in 2010. However, the City of Johannesburg and many academic and civil society actors are determined to change these attitudes.

Migrating out of Poverty partner the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS) is partaking in ‘myth busting’ projects. All around the city you can hear stories about buses full of pregnant Zimbabwean women arriving daily in Johannesburg to give birth and stay in South Africa. There is little truth to such tales, but belief in them is strong, and politicians do not shy away from feeding into anti-immigrant attitudes similar to those we read daily in European news about ‘benefit tourists’. On one day I witnessed these attitudes first hand. I had visited a social project for children and youth in a township of Pretoria with a social worker from Rwanda. She has built this project together with a friend of mine. She and her family have lived in South Africa for more than 10 years now. We took a minibus back to the city and the driver started speaking in Afrikaans to me until we explained that I was just visiting and did not speak Afrikaans. His reaction was rather cold when asking me where I was from and what I was doing in South Africa, but still polite. Then, however, he turned to my Rwandan companion and asked her with a very suspicious undertone, where she was from and what she was doing in South Africa. I could feel the tension in the air, she felt threatened. So she replied with a lie, saying that she, too, was just visiting with me.

On the other hand, the City of Johannesburg is actively seeking to improve the situation of immigrants, be it international or internal, unskilled or skilled. The Business Union of South Africa is actively involved in anti-xenophobia campaigns, because businesses are looking for workers with skills which often they cannot find among South African workers. Many foreign business people I talked to told me that they were eager to hire South Africans, but in the end hired someone from Zimbabwe or other countries, because they were just better equipped with the skills the employer needed. Thus, the city recognizes that the integration efforts have to aim equally at internal migrants from rural parts of the country as well as at international immigrants to give them access to services and legal working opportunities.

Around 85% of migrants entering South Africa come from the Southern African Development Community. Most taxi drivers in Johannesburg I talked to came from different parts of the country or the continent. This puts the European media news stories on the ‘masses’ of immigrants from Africa with their suggestion that Europe is the dream destination for migrants from the African continent, into perspective. To me it seems that South Africa is the number one destination for many African migrants and the city of Johannesburg alone welcomes thousands of immigrants from within and outside the country every month. As the Mayor says, “This is not merely a challenge, but also an opportunity”.

And many people see and take this opportunity. Numerous artists, designers, musicians choose Jozi as their place of inspiration. Long ignored and run-down areas of the city are re-discovered and re-populated by businesses. Kids and youth speak at least three languages because they grow up surrounded by people from different parts of the country or the continent. Students at the famous University of Witwatersrand come from all over the country and the world. Many also hope to return to their origins and make a difference there, using the skills they learned and building on the networks they established in the City of Migrants.

Johannesburg, City of Migrants

Sources:

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-11-07-on-the-move-south-africa-and-migration/#.Vf7wUN9VhBc

https://www.enca.com/south-africa/migration-joburg-should-be-opportunity-mayor

http://www.joburg.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6826:migration-under-the-spotlight&catid=88&Itemid=266

http://www.joburg.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5686:migration-discussed&catid=88&Itemid=340

Eva Maria Egger is a doctoral candidate in Economics at the University of Sussex, funded by the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium. Findings from the household survey that Eva-Maria worked on are published in the new working paper, Migrating out of Poverty in Zimbabwe, by Vupenyu Dzingirai, Eva-Maria Egger, Loren Landau, Julie Litchfield, Patience Mutopo and Kefasi Nyikahadzoi, which is available on the Migrating out of Poverty website.

The ‘Art’ of Research Communication

by Kuda Vanyoro

From my experience at the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS) and engagement with literature by other writers who have faced similar, it is clear that at times research findings and evidence on nationally contested issues like migration may prove the positive contributions of migration to development and poverty eradication prematurely, when the audience in question is not ready to hear the positions that researchers take. In other words, there may be socially entrenched stereotypical perceptions of migrants, as is the case in South Africa, which lead the recipients of the message to ignore it. In such instances, targeting a policy audience alone when communicating research findings and evidence is insufficient to impact or influence policy because of regressive societal attitudes which may also be held by policy makers.

 

There then arises, today more than ever, the need to tactfully disseminate research findings in a more decentralised, artistic and aesthetical manner. This may involve targeting a ‘popular culture’ non-policy audience through art and other forms of eye-candy such as film, exhibitions and storytelling in order to drive the facts home. The success of this process depends on creativity on the part of the research communicators tasked with coming up with a means of enticing and attracting this non-policy audience. Where this drive is led by the sole purpose of myth-busting and de-construction of shared societal misconceptions and stereotypes of migrants, such creativity may yield positive results, even in spite of the danger of further subjecting those whom we hope to emancipate with the research, to further stereotypes, which is a common pitfall.

 

Research communication is therefore in my view both a profession and an art. A good example of tackling a sensitive issue successfully is an ongoing research project at the ACMS titled Volume 44, which is a collaborative research project on migrant sex workers in the cities of Johannesburg and Musina. The South African National Aids Council has estimated that there are 153,000 sex workers in South Africa. A large proportion of these are located in Gauteng, the smallest but most populous province in South Africa, in which both Johannesburg and Pretoria are located. Sex work is popularly perceived as migrant dominated, and work conducted by Marlise Richter and Jo Vearey based on interviews with 1636 sex workers found that just over 85% of sex workers were migrants. Of these 39% were internal migrants and 46.3% were cross-border migrants. Volume 44 builds on a 2010 project which sought to highlight the experiences of migrant women involved in sex work within inner city Johannesburg through visual medium in the exhibition ‘Working the City’. At the time of writing, Volume 44 has staged 3 exhibitions: one in Johannesburg 21 May – 27 June 2014; a second in Amsterdam 25-28 June 2014; and the last one in Bogota in 14-19 July 2014. The exhibition was highly visual and its Johannesburg launch, for which I organised the publicity, attracted an attendance of nearly one hundred people from all walks of life: young students, media professionals, sex workers and academics.

Sex work in South Africa is not legal, and activist voices are calling for its decriminalization in a bid to combat the lack of access to health care, stigma, discrimination and criminalisation under the Sexual Offences Act faced by those engaged in it. While both migrant and local sex workers face stigma, particularly at grassroots levels, migrant sex workers are viewed with the utmost hostility. Therefore, it is only reasonable to assume that advocacy for the protection of sex workers in South Africa can only yield tangible policy results once social attitudes that result in stigma have been eliminated, or at least sensitised, from below. 

In the coming years, researchers will need to learn to adopt popular packaging for their research communication if their voice is to be heard beyond the ivory towers of universities. This is especially true with contentious topics like migration where research positions are often not what receiving communities and policy makers may want to hear. Volume 44 is an attempt to use photography, real-life narratives, audio and other forms of exhibitory art to get ordinary people thinking in a different way about contested issues. The art, complementing the research findings about migrant sex work, can provide potent weapons to communicate unwelcome research messages for positive evidence-based policy making, social transformation and other envisaged policy outcomes.

Visitors to the Johannesburg Volume 44 exhibition view '"Letter to a young sex worker" - a wall of letters written by the project participants'

 

Kudakwashe Vanyoro has concluded his Research, Communications and Outreach Internship at the African Centre for Migration and Society(ACMS), University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), funded by the Migrating out of Poverty Research Consortium. Read Kuda's profile.

Survival in the City of Gold

By Kuda Vanyoro

 

I have never ceased to be fascinated by Johannesburg and the many experiences it has offered me throughout my internship. There are many sides to this beautiful city but not all are delightful. In my opinion, Johannesburg is a place of opportunity where people of different cultures, races and nationalities converge in search of better lives, thus its epithet Egoli (city of gold). In the broad Johannesburg space internal migrants (as presented in my last blog) and international migrants co-exist. Each migration trajectory brings with it varied effects on the culture of the city, which becomes one of struggle for survival. Both internal and foreign migrants are driven by the desire to get employed - formally or informally - in an attempt to extract financial resources for a better livelihood in the city and for remittances to send back home. Stiff competition among internal migrants for these limited resources which are then extended to foreign migrants builds up, resulting in a system that marginalises those who are less skilled and those who demand higher wages from employers. So it is often the locals who suffer in this search for gold that the city promises.

This complex system results in wage-labour conflicts and competition, leaving those who lose out with no alternative but to survive the hard way. This gets me to the central focus of this blog: crime in inner-city Johannesburg. The views expressed here are more of an opinion than an expert analysis, and emerge from my personal experience as I try to draw out lessons and key themes related to the migration and poverty field. On two occasions during my short stay in Johannesburg thus far, I have been a victim of crime. The first encounter was a random amateur mugging on the sidewalk, and the other one was a more professional mugging in the early hours along the streets of Doornfontein. My brushes with crime in the city are, of course, not  unique. I urge the reader not to sympathise with me: I have come to terms with these misfortunes as part of my internship experience and have nothing to shed tears about.

The understanding I have arrived at from my experience is that migration for work in a city like Johannesburg is functional, creating a fairly equitable system of subsistence, better livelihood and economic development in South Africa and the region as a whole. I drove this point home in my previous blog.  However, not everyone benefits. Some are left out due to other variables which are somewhat more academic than I have scope for, but one factor is poor government policy. Most of the migrants who are less well served by the formal labour system turn to informal work such as vending. But what happens to the least well served who are not educationally or skilfully equipped or who simply lack the will or capacity to be entrepreneurs? I am of the conviction that some of these people either return to their original homes, or alternatively they turn to crime, which is a male dominated occupation in this city. Contrary to the claim that external migrants are responsible for most of the crime in Johannesburg, both internal and international migrants are involved,. Even nationals that migrate to the city for better lives may be vulnerable to falling into criminality because the cheaper labour and better skills that foreign migrants offer leads to some locals failing to find jobs. Government policies often ignore such realities, and in the process overlook a vicious cycle that renders South African society hostile and unsafe for everyone. This demonstrates the pertinence of a solid and realistic migration and labour policy for the broader society and everyone’s well-being in the fight for the eradication of poverty.

My unfortunate experiences awakened my curiosity to find out the rational dynamics around migration and crime. I did not manage to talk to a lot of people involved in crime due to the issue’s sensitivity and the lack of a clear cut research agenda, but an informal chat with Mark (not his real name), a local Xhosa man who stays in Berea, was enough to convince me that sometimes crime was a response to the frustrations of unemployment. Although not xenophobic, Mark did attribute his joblessness to the influx of foreign migrants, but not exclusively. He was aware of the government’s central role in job creation, but he alluded to the fact that he had turned to crime (“other means” of livelihood) because of the huge pressures brought to bear on the labour market by both internal and foreign migrants. Maybe it was just his poor excuse for his unruly and deviant behaviour, but nonetheless it should not be totally disregarded.

Again, such mundane stories of migration in a context of poverty pose more questions than answers. I am not aiming to provide answers but to call for critical thinking around the social dynamics of migration and migration’s adverse effects in the absence of efficient and real policies meant for real people. There is much that can be done to alleviate poverty in Southern Africa and one of these things is development of a proper migration and labour policy, without which the poor will continue to suffer the adverse effects of crime and other social ills. Until such a time, the search for a better life and the promise of gold in the city will remain highly contested and unduly competitive.

Johannesburg by night - a site of "other means" of livelihoods

Kudakwashe Vanyoro is the current Research, Communications and Outreach Intern at the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS), University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), funded by the Migrating out of Poverty Research Consortium. Read Kuda's profile.