Behind the research: Loren Landau

Over the course of the last 10 years, the Migrating out of Poverty consortium has drawn on the enthusiasm and expertise of many people across the globe. This blog series focuses on the people behind the research, who have kindly shared personal reflections and learning from their experience of working with the consortium.

Loren Landau is a Senior Researcher at the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) at Wits University in Johannesburg, and was Director between 2006 to 2014 when the programme was in its early stages.

ACMS was one of the founding members of the consortium.  As an emerging research centre, this was an opportunity to partner with progressive scholars and institutions across the global south. In doing so, it offered a unique opportunity to shape research and policy agendas at multiple scales. By working through productive tensions, the consortium became stronger, the ACMS was able to expand its scope and ambitions, while I gained perspective and insight. 

Whether through my work on local government or overseeing broader questions of labour migration, urbanisation, and the migration industry, the consortium’s successes and shortcomings served as an intense education. Beyond generating empirical insights and knowledge, I – and the consortium –helped lay foundations for ever more critical and constructive consideration of partnerships, in engagement, and in the politics of research beyond the wealthy west. 

It has encouraged me to more deeply explore the formal and informal means of migration management at multiple levels while shifting how I work. Many now speak about south-south partnerships as the future of research. With Migrating out of Poverty we were able to forge and formalise those partnerships more than a decade ago.

The Migrating out of Poverty programme has been a true team effort, and we appreciate the role each individual has played in producing and disseminating the research.

Thank you for all your hard work with the Migrating out of Poverty programme, Loren!

Behind the research: Mohammad Jalal Uddin Sikder

Over the course of the last 10 years, the Migrating out of Poverty consortium has drawn on the enthusiasm and expertise of many people across the globe. This blog series focuses on the people behind the research, who have kindly shared personal reflections and learning from their experience of working with the consortium.

Mohammad Jalal Uddin Sikder serves as an Associate Professor at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), and worked with the consortium between 2013 and 2016. During this time, he worked on the policy processes theme, focusing on a study of ‘Cross-border movement of the Rohingyas from Burma: Exclusion, vulnerability and survival strategies’. Mohammad also conducted research on ‘Gendered practices of remittance use and the shaping of youth aspiration: A case of Bangladesh’, under the gender and generations research theme. 

The biggest lesson I have learned through my involvement in the programme is a theoretical understanding and explaining on migration, life choices, life chances, vulnerabilities, social inclusion  and exclusion and social resilience. These contribute to an understanding of the ways in which migration and remittances contribute to development and shape social actions and relations in Bangladesh. 

Attending the“Poverty Research Consortium Meeting”, organised by the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) in March 2014 was the most important moment for me because I met the team and could share our knowledge. I learned a lot of enlightening information, particularly about research communications and planning strategies, very important aspects of the project. 

The Migrating out of Poverty programme has allowed me to build a very strong academic and research reputation in Bangladesh, and South Asia. Based on two research papers, I have already published two working papers, two book chapters to Routledge and two policy briefs. I have also received invitations to present research findings in national and international conferences, participated national and international TV talk shows and published comments to national and international newspapers and magazines.     

The Migrating out of Poverty programme has been a true team effort, and we appreciate the role each individual has played in producing and disseminating the research.

Thank you for all your hard work with the Migrating out of Poverty programme, Mohammad!

Behind the research: Brenda SA Yeoh

Over the course of the last 10 years, the Migrating out of Poverty consortium has drawn on the enthusiasm and expertise of many people across the globe. This blog series focuses on the people behind the research, who have kindly shared personal reflections and learning from their experience of working with the consortium.

Brenda worked with the Migrating out of Poverty programme for 8 years, in her position as Research Leader of the Asian Migration Cluster at the Asia Research Institute. Brenda investigated a number of themes including remittances and livelihood strategies of Indonesian migrant women as domestic workers in Singapore, and policy dynamics and processes. 

"With its considerable scope across research centers in Asia and Africa, working on Migrating out of Poverty has allowed me to deepen research networks and nurture collaborative relationships with leading experts on migration from a range of disciplines and backgrounds.  

I'm proud to have worked with an excellent team of young, emerging scholars in Singapore as well as international collaborators to extend existing research and tease out comparative approaches to migration and development in Asia and Africa.  

One of the most unique aspects in participating in Migrating out of Poverty has been the concerted effort to produce work that is not only timely and sound but also relevant to stakeholders beyond an academic audience, prompting us to reflect closely on the policy implications of our findings. Policy matters!"

The Migrating out of Poverty programme has been a true team effort, and we appreciate the role each individual has played in producing and disseminating the research.

Thank you for all your hard work with the Migrating out of Poverty programme, Brenda!

UN draft Declaration on migration: A focus on internal migration and the generation and use of evidence are sadly lacking

By L Alan Winters

On the 19^th September, the UN will hold a High Level Meeting of the General Assembly on addressing large movements of refugees and migrants. It will be informed by a draft Declaration of fairly broad principles accompanied by two Annexes making somewhat more concrete commitments.

The Declaration makes twelve references to ‘sustainable development’ and is heavily oriented towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The high principles of the 2030 Agenda led to concrete promises only in terms of achieving ‘orderly’ migration and the minor issue of remittance costs. The Declaration takes a more balanced approach to migration, by recognising more frankly the developmental benefits that it brings. However, the Declaration’s principal route to ‘balance’ is to mention almost any idea that exists which pertains to migration. Given such comprehensiveness, it is perhaps surprising that I was mainly struck by two omissions – one conscious, but nonetheless regrettable, and the other (I hope) by over-sight. 

Internal migration

The Declaration states that there were 244 million international migrants in 2015. But we know that there were also probably about 760 million internal migrants. The causes and consequences of internal migration are pretty similar to those of international migration, except that in most countries there is no formal legal barrier equivalent to immigration policies a country’s border. People move to try to raise their standards of life in economic or social terms. Because the physical and cultural distances between origin and destination are usually smaller for internal migration, it is cheaper and thus more open to poorer people. So, internal migration is more likely to help overcome poverty than international migration because most international migrants tend not to be poor in the first place.

The lower cost of internal than international migration also means that people will move for smaller rewards and/or with less concern for the risks - internal migration involves taking a smaller bet. As a result it is not surprising to see that some internal migrants fail to realise the gains they hoped for and face challenges finding decent housing and secure employment. This is no reason to discourage migration, however; rather it calls for policies to ease migrants’ transitions by countering discrimination, making public services accessible even to newcomers, and ensuring that potential migrants have access to better information.

Where is the evidence base?

The unconscious omission is to evidence, research or analysis; none of these words occurs at all in the Declaration or its Annexes! There is a hint (in Annex II para. 4.3) of ‘technical expertise’ being provided by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and reference to a role for civil society, but these are not commitments to evidence-informed policy and practice per se.

Given our profound ignorance of the process and parameters of migration this omission is rather disturbing. The shopping list approach of the Declaration, which lists nearly all possible migration-relevant approaches and activities, means that there is a desperate need to characterise the necessary trade-offs and priorities in deciding what sub-set of them to actually undertake.

In the Migrating Out of Poverty Consortium we have studied the process of making or changing policy in the super-sensitive field of migration. We find that, while politicians often rely more on narratives and myths than on hard analysis (for more on this see our work in Singapore and Bangladesh). Handled sensibly evidence can make an important, if not dominant, contribution to good policy outcomes. Moreover, in one case soon to be published on our website – South Africa’s Trafficking in Persons Act 2013 – the politicians themselves felt the absence of data and analysis acutely.

For sure, we need to act now on migration and to make policy with the best information we have now, but that does not excuse failing to seek more and better evidence in future. Thus in its debate I urge the General Assembly to make a special reference to undertaking research and policy analysis in migration on a deep and wide scale, not to see it as a mere technical afterthought to be managed by its latest recruit to the UN family (the IOM).

The Domino Effect: The politics of international migration

by Shezane Kabura                             

With a background in humanitarianism and international development, I am familiar with aspects of forced migration. I am particularly passionate on refugee issues hence my dissertation research lies within the investigation of UNHCR as a surrogate state in the case of Daadab, Kenya. As important as my work and study on forced migration has been, I wanted to broaden my scope of study by coming for three months to South Africa and in particular to Migrating out of Poverty’s southern Africa partner, ACMS.

I couldn’t have been more right! Since I arrived in Johannesburg, topics on economic and labour migration have topped the agenda. Personally, this has been the best opportunity to engage with this new field of study. What is even more interesting, is the fact that I have learnt that even though my country hosts one of the largest refugee populations in Africa, the rate of emigration from Kenya is increasingly becoming a concern for policy makers. This then gave me an idea for my first MOOP blog. In an age when neither refugees nor migrants are particularly welcome, the line between the two is increasingly blurred and the terms themselves have been weighed down by politics. 

When I think about international migration and all the policies surrounding it, I refer to Plato’s cave as an allegory. One has to step outside the cave to see what is not immediately visible and then go back in and see what can be visibly fixed. Theoretically, economic migrants, choose to move in order to improve the future prospects of themselves and their families whereas refugees have to move if they are to save their lives or preserve their freedom. Yet, reality is much murkier. People often move for various reasons that may include fear of persecution as well as wanting to find better economic opportunities. The integration of international migration and securitisation policies in the new world order has led to international migration being framed as a threat to national, physical and economic security. What we face today is a paradigm change within an unchecked slide into an era in which the response for international migration is restrictive in nature, in contrast to the trends of a decade or two ago towards open borders. This causes a domino effect in migration policies around the world as countries compete to be the toughest, seemingly in the hope of protecting their own territories.

Spatial mobility is a fundamental social and historical aspect of African life, but what sets it apart from other regions, however, is that most African international migration is intra-continental, consisting of regional movements within the continent by refugees, nomads, undocumented migrants, and seasonal labour migrants. Although the “spectre” of African refugees seeking asylum in Europe has received a lot of media attention, other forms of international movement migration have also increased, namely the circulation of low-wage labour, the permanent exit of skilled workers from Africa to other continents, and the irregular migration of undocumented workers at all skill levels. Moreover, unlike refugee flows in all directions across Africa, people migrating for work or business opportunities gravitate to economies they perceive to be more developed, within the four main African sub-regions or on other continents.

In my opinion, countries are only evaluating their obligations through a cost versus benefit framework. States only comply if the fiscal cost is low and if they think that it will cause perceived harm in their own societies. In South Africa, for example, the (not yet passed) Refugee Amendment Bill of August 2015 purports to ensure that the asylum application process is streamlined to distinguish economic migrants from people with a bona fide case for refugee status.[1] The new provisions provide for the South African migration authority to not ask questions about why people have fled their countries to seek refuge elsewhere, but instead about an asylum applicant's skills, economic circumstances, employment history or number of dependents, which are not relevant to an asylum application. The questionnaire includes detailed questions about education level, employment history and skills, including a request that asylum seekers (who usually flee in a hurry) provide documentation in the form of testimonials and pay slips! In many countries, there is no provision for low-skill labour migration and hence this new Bill is an example of a state trying to deal with the global situation of many economic migrants trying to enter countries via the asylum application systems. Distinctions like these are made because across the world low-skilled labour migrants are generally viewed as much “less deserving” of states’ and citizens’ sympathy and support than refugees.  

Furthermore, research shows that no (or vague) labour migration policies and agreements are linked to endogenous societal vices like corruption which risks the integrity and functionality of many states’ governance systems and socio-economic development. In a recent working paper published by Migrating out of Poverty, researchers outlined the cost of South Africa’s expenditure on immigration enforcement and made estimates of the potential costs of increasing immigration control.[2] I was also interested that the research found that the costs to the South African state of enforcing its migration policy are largely unknown to the South African public and the state itself.

The paradox of international migration lies in the continuing proliferation of labels for mobile people that no longer seem adequate to encompass people who migrate willingly, those who flee for their lives, and the whole spectrum of migration and self-determination that falls in between. Deteriorating economic, social, political, and ecological conditions across the continent have produced changes in the places African migrants move to, as well as in its pattern, composition and dynamics. As a result, it seems to me that the terminology on human movement is in a real muddle. I think a fundamental task in 2016 for policy makers and researchers in the academic world is an urgent rethinking of the conceptualisation of mixed migration.

I personally believe that the old assumptions made by states on the cost of taking in these ‘mixed migrants’ can no longer apply. Nevertheless, I can see that changing the old assumptions is dependent on the transformation of nation-states’ various types of behaviour. In terms of philosophy, the ability of states to reconstruct a realm different from that of Dante’s inferno which is grounded on the appropriate distinction between the value of human life and the political world seems crucial. I think all nation-states and their citizens have to realise that people are no longer living in isolated territorial spaces and that all people have a moral obligation in how we shape our transnational interactions. The time has come to thoroughly review states’ behaviour in order to end the current cycle of organisational and institutional dysfunction, and to transform it into efficacy. States essentially need to be held accountable.

References

---

[1] Lange, I. (July 2016). Campaign against xenophobia launched. The Citizen. Retrieved from http://www.citizen.co.za/1165647/campaign-against-xenophobia-launched/

[2] Mthembu-Salter,G., Amit, R.,  Gould., C. & Landau, L. (September, 2014). Counting the Cost of Securitising South Africa’s Immigration Regime. Migration out of Poverty. Working Paper 20. Retrieved from http://www.migration.org.za/uploads/docs/wp20_mthembu-salter-et-al-2014-counting-the-cost.pdf

International aid will not stem the flow of migrants

by L. Alan Winters

As the political tension over migration from developing to developed countries increases, I hear more often from ‘liberals’ (in the UK sense) that we should use developed countries’  international aid to try to stem the flow. There are, indeed, lots of good reasons to send aid to low-income countries – don’t believe the stories that it has no, or even a harmful, effect – but curbing emigration is not one of them. Earlier this year Chris Parsons of Oxford University and I surveyed the literature and concluded that there is very little evidence that aid curtails migration and a good deal that suggest the very opposite.  This survey is available as Working Paper 16 'International Trade, Migration and Aid: A survey' from the Migrating Out of Poverty Consortium, based at the University of Sussex and will be published on 26^th December in the International Handbook On Migration And Economic Development, edited by Robert E B Lucas.

Why doesn’t such an apparently obvious policy work? First, aid is too small to affect migration by closing the gap between rich and poor: with a typical developed country having income per head some 25 times higher than a typical low-income country, even a big and highly effective aid flow will be only a drop in the ocean.  Second, as aid increases the incomes of people in developing countries it is likely to make it easier for them to afford the high costs associated with international migration. That is, it provides the means to migrate. Third, delivering aid generally increases the contacts between rich and poor nations and so increases the information flow and deepens the networks between them, which reduces the risks entailed in migration.

Both aid and migration have a role in fostering development and alleviating poverty; let’s not view them as substitutes.

 

 Professor L. Alan Winters is the CEO of the Migrating out of Poverty Consortium and Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex.

Indonesia's “Special Treatment” of their International Migrants: Between Lip Service and Reality

By: Endang Sugiyarto

 
 

Indonesia recently experienced a new breeze promising to bring a wind of change when the new president took drastic action to protect the welfare of Indonesian international migrants (who are known as Tenaga Kerja Indonesia or TKI meaning Indonesian overseas worker) by asking the relevant government apparatus to “really treat them as heroes” (as indicated in the government official documents)[1] but also to “remove some of the special treatments” or privileges associated with or given to them. The apparent contradiction between these two requests lies at the heart of the issue. 

 

Due to the lack of job opportunities in the domestic economy, millions of Indonesians are currently working abroad, mostly as low-skilled workers but with incomes at least five times higher than those of their counterparts working in the same job domestically. According to official figures from the National Authority for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Overseas Workers (BNP2TKI), on average 563,262 Indonesian migrants worked abroad each year during the period 2007 to October 2014. This number is far below that of the unrecorded migrants who leave the country using various means. The majority of the TKI work in Southeast and East Asia and the Middle East, and the top five destinations from January to October 2014 are Malaysia (30% of total), Taiwan (19%), Saudi Arabia (11%), Hong Kong (8%) and Singapore (7%). They are mainly employed as  domestic workers (33%), followed by caretakers (12%), plantation workers (11%), factory workers (11%), general workers (5%), seamen (5%) and others (24%). 

 

The TKI directly contribute to the domestic economy by reducing unemployment and providing foreign exchange income via remittances, which could only otherwise be obtained through exports. Thus, this labour export policy is a “win-win” for the government, for it doesn’t need to provide jobs for those who leave while the economy reaps the benefit of their remittance inflows. Thus, the government has decided to treat them as foreign exchange heroes who must be respected accordingly. This is reflected, for instance, in provisions made at the airport. The TKI are given a special terminal, a special immigration lane, a special lounge, special trolleys, a special transfer bus or transportation, and other special things (the pictures below illustrate some of these provisions). The list of special provisions is in fact more extensive than outlined here, as some local governments add supplementary benefits such as temporary accommodation. In some cases, additional special treatments are given to those joining the G(overnment) to G(overnment) programs operated in conjunction with  Japan, Korea and Taiwan for example. These G to G programmes provide benefits in the form of special seminars, financial management and exchange rates for the salaries of the TKI involved.

 

So what is the problem then?

 

The problem is the gap between the policy and the reality of implementation on the ground. In a nutshell, these special treatments provided by the government have been used by corrupt government bureaucrats and their accomplices, often located in the private sector, to extort money. They set up a range of tariffs, exchange rates, and mark ups for their own benefit. The findings of a series of undercover and surprise inspections by the anti-corruption committee that were also exposed by the media have revealed the bad practices. Moreover, during the video conference between the President and Indonesian workers in: Brunei Darussalam, Egypt, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, which took place on 30 November 2014, the exposure of further corrupt practices led to the President taking action to remove some of the special treatments afforded to the TKI. The crackdown on these extortionate practices is welcome, and include the thwarting of a syndicate allegedly engaged in human trafficking of Indonesian migrant workers through Malaysia to destinations in Middle Eastern countries. But more work is needed to address this issue since  what has been exposed so far is just the tip of the iceberg! The new government needs to systematically solve the problems by better facilitating migration and protecting migrants’ welfare, throughout their migration cycle from the stages prior to their departure up to their return home. 

 

To start with, the deployment system must be improved, including better preparation of migrant workers. In connection with this, serious concerns must be addressed in relation to recruitment agencies. Their role has become very dominant (partly due to the lack of appropriate government intervention) which has resulted in migration becoming very commercial. Many agencies now also act as employers, creating a situation in which the migrant worker has become very vulnerable to abuse and exploitation in different forms. The widespread practice of “fly now and pay later” which renders migrants indebted to the agencies until they repay the cost of their flights, and of agencies having full control over all the arrangements: from the migrants’ passports to their contracts and deployment etc., should be seen as worrying.

 

Last summer I met a new migrant on her way to Malaysia where the recruitment agency had organised her trip, obtained her passport and visa, provided domestic and international transportation, and made all the other arrangements, while she had made practically none of the preparations herself. She was just told to go to the airport, board the aircraft, and somebody would pick her up at the destination airport. She had no information at all about the Indonesian Embassy in Malaysia and less than Rp2000 (less than 20 US cents or around 10 GB pence) in her pocket because the agent also told her that she would not need any Indonesian money. What if just one step in this elaborate process went wrong? How would the aspiring migrant worker cope? The outcome of her desperate action is anybody’s guess! 

 

Even more concern will be revealed if we scrutinize the job contract and other details, and ask basic questions such as: what kind of job will she be doing? What are the terms? How much will her salary be? How many months will it take her to repay all the costs associated with her departure that have been prepaid by the agency? And so on…

 

The potential problems and complexities stemming from this kind of arrangement are predictable. To illustrate, the official data shows that 181,193 migrants arrived back in Indonesia through 14 different airports from January to October 2014. Many of them returned before their contracts were completed due to various problems, such as incomplete documents, work-related ill health, an inability to work or communicate properly, and other reasons. Who are to be blamed for these outcomes? I hope that the new government is not going to blame the migrant workers for they are more the victims than the culprits! Their only mistake is to try to escape from poverty by entering into the wilderness of the international labour market. And they only took that route because the domestic market did not provide them with any other opportunities….

---

[1] This kind of treatment is not unique to Indonesia as many other developing countries adopt similar policies.

Fig 1: Examples of airport special facilities for the TKI - Indonesia's foreign exchange heroes

 Endang Sugiyarto is a doctoral candidate in Migration Studies at the University of Sussex, funded by the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium

Migrating from the big cities for opportunities in smaller towns: The case of Brazil

by Eva Maria Egger 

While most of the literature on internal migration focuses on rapid urbanization and metropolitan cities as destinations filled with opportunities for migrants, little attention has been paid to those people who leave the big cities. Not only do migrants return to their places of origin in rural areas, but  many people decide to leave their place of birth in the metropolitan area to find opportunities in smaller towns. Recently, Christiaensen et al. (2013) have pointed out the importance of smaller towns for the economic development of African countries in contrast to the traditional standard two-sector development model. And considering all the discussions about the issues around urbanization, such as high unemployment, poor housing infrastructure, high crime etc., it should not be surprising that some people also consider leaving these difficult environments.

However, from an economic perspective, one of the main drivers for internal migration is the seeking of higher wages. As wages are on average much higher in metropolitan areas, leaving these areas comes at the cost of a wage loss. Despite this, Brazil’s 2010 census, the most recent demographic data, shows that net-migration into metropolitan cities[1] is negative for working-age male migrants. Between 2009 and 2010, 20% of all working age male migrants within Brazil moved out of metropolitan micro-regions to non-metropolitan micro-regions with on average less than 500,000 inhabitants. During the same period, only around 15% moved in the opposite direction. These urban out-migrants actually change jobs and are not just reflecting suburbanisation by commuters. Also, the migrants are a diverse group: a third of them have attained only primary education, while around 18% are college graduates.

Therefore, in my research I aim to use econometric methods to estimate which factors make  smaller towns more attractive compared to metropolitan cities, if not wages. My findings suggest, that one of the main economic drivers is the much lower living costs in smaller towns, such that migrants on average do not experience a wage loss in real terms. They prefer towns with growing economic opportunities rather than very small and remote areas. In terms of non-economic factors, the migrants appear to value the quality of provision of education. These findings indicate that the investments of the Brazilian government during the recent years into infrastructure development of smaller towns and former less developed and more remote regions is bearing fruit. As more and more Brazilians are attracted to these locations they contribute to a reduction in regional inequality. Thus it could be worth widening the focus of our migration research to include these destinations outside of metropolitan agglomerations and for policy makers, too, to acknowledge the potential of smaller towns.

Reference:

Christiaensen, L., J. De Weerdt and Y. Todo (2013), Urbanization and poverty reduction: the role of rural diversification and secondary towns, Agricultural Economics, 44, 435-447.

Eva Maria Egger is a doctoral candidate in Economics at the University of Sussex, funded by the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.

---

[1] Metropolitan areas are microregions with one million or more inhabitants. This definition follows the United Nations’ World Urbanization Prospects (UNWUP, http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/) (Christaensen et al. 2013). 

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.

Women on the Move: Migrating for liberation and empowerment

By Endang Sugiyarto

One of the key trends in international migration today is the growing feminization of migration flows. More and more women have been migrating abroad and the latest estimate shows that women migrants already number about a half of all migrants, indicating that the migrant stock is already gender balanced (see World Bank and UN data on this).[1] A similar feminization trend is also observed for internal migration (Deshingkar and Grimm, 2005).

Women used to be in the latter category of ‘the migrant and their families’, migrating mainly as following mothers, daughters or other relatives. But now one can witness increasing flows of ‘single’ women migrating abroad as independent labourers in search of better lives for themselves and ‘their’ families. The significant increase in their number has been accompanied by a rise in their economic contributions to their host and home countries, as well as to their families. The rise in these last two has occurred despite the fact that they tend to earn less than their male counterparts, since they compensate by sending relatively more remittances, and doing so more regularly and consistently. Women also tend to spend more remittances on family oriented expenditures therefore it makes sense to expect remittances to have an increased development impact as a result of the increased participation of women participation in international migration.

 On the theoretical side, the idea that the migrant is only motivated to move due to the significant differences in wage levels and expected income between origin and destination is out of date, for it ignores the interplay of a range of dynamics, some of which are gender specific and particularly relevant to women. Moreover, economic factors do not have a gender-neutral impact; economic development may change male and female roles, and the demand for international migrants can also be gender specific. Therefore, the explicit consideration of gender in the study of migration and remittances is long overdue.

The nature of work-based contracts, which tend to be temporary in the first instance, and the immigration policies which prevent workers from taking their families with them when they move, demonstrate the sentiment that the workers are wanted but their families are not. These features have the impact of further strengthening the flows of single women. These women have been migrating for various reasons, many of which can be classified as liberating and empowering. In addition to the economic freedom of better pay and income at their destination, many single women go abroad due to family dissolution, lack of choice and direction in their home country, and to escape from ‘domestic constraints’ resulting from personal and other circumstances including bad or failed marriages, traditional communities, and limited local opportunities in general. For them, migration is a symbolic act to end suffering and to move on to a new life. Not all of them succeed, unfortunately, as many become victims of abuse and exploitations of different forms.

It is interesting to look empirically at where these women come from, the nature of the sending households, and their occupation abroad. A case study on Indonesia, using Susenas data, shows that around 60 per cent of Indonesian migrants are women. I also found strong push factors within their household conditions and the characteristics attributed to the places they live that encourage some of them to create networks and diaspora that further ease the migration process, resulting in migrant pockets. The phenomenon of migrant pockets is not unique to Indonesia as they can also be observed in countries such as Bangladesh, China, and Pakistan (Skeldon, 2008), and others. As we all know, migration takes place not only because of need and ability, but also opportunity that is strengthened by the development and availability of networks, not necessarily only by migrants themselves, but also by recruiting agencies and markets as migration can be a lucrative business.

Moreover, the women mostly come from poorer, less educated and agriculture based family backgrounds. Most – 68 per cent - work as domestic workers, which is arguably the easiest occupation for them to access. The National Account concept of their pre-migration activities is of ‘unpaid domestic work’. However after migration they enter the international sphere as paid domestic workers, part of the ‘global nanny chain’ or ‘the international division of reproductive labour’ whereby a person – usually a woman - leaves their home to take up a paid caring role abroad, resulting in the caring role within their own family being delegated to another person. At the national level there have been calls for men not to marry their domestic workers in order to create an illusion of increasing national product (gross domestic product - GDP) by ensuring that salaried work does not become unpaid domestic work.

All this highlights the phenomenon of migration out of necessity and demands better facilitation and protection. More needs to be done to transform the increase in women’s international migration into a new force for women’s liberation and empowerment!

Endang Sugiyarto is a doctoral candidate in Migration Studies at the University of Sussex, funded by the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.

---

[1] The DEMIG project argues that the absence of women in historic migration data is due more to the invisibility of women in research before the 1980s rather than being an indication that women were not migrating. The gender aspect of migration was under-researched and what has happened since has in fact been a feminization of scientific interest rather than a feminization of migration flows (see http://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/research-projects/demig for more information).