Full Description
South Africa is a rapidly urbanising society. Over 60% of the population lives in urban areas and this will rise to more than 70% by 2030. However, it is also a society with a long history of labour migration, rural home-making and urban economic and residential insecurity. Thus, while the formal institutional systems of migrant labour and the hated pass laws were dismantled after apartheid, a large portion of the South African population remains double-rooted in the sense that they have an urban place of residence and access to a rural homestead to which they periodically return and often eventually retire. This reality, which continues to have profound impacts on social cohesion, family life, gender relations, household investment, settlement dynamic and political identity formation, is the main focus of this book.
Migrant Labour after Apartheid focuses on internal migrants and migration, rather than cross border migration into South Africa. It cautions against a linear narrative of change and urban transition. The book is divided into two parts. The first half investigates urbanisation processes from the perspective of internal migration. Several of the chapters make use of recently available survey data collected in a national longitudinal study to describe patterns and trends in labour migration, the economic returns to migration, and the links between the migration of adults and the often-ignored migration of children. The last three chapters of this section shine a spotlight on conditions of migrant workers in destination areas by focusing on Marikana and mining on the platinum belt.
The second half of the book explores the double rootedness of migrants through the lens of the rural hinterland from which migration often occurs. The chapters here focus on the Eastern Cape as a case study of a region from which (particularly longer-distance) labour migration has been very common. The contributions describe the limited opportunities for livelihood strategies in the countryside, which encourage outmigration, but also note the accelerated rates of household investment, especially in the built environment in the former homelands.
Contents
List of figures and tables
Abbreviations and acronyms
Acknowledgements
Preface
1.Introduction: Migrant labour after apartheid — Leslie Bank, Dorrit Posel and Francis Wilson
Part 1: Migration and urbanisation after apartheid
2.Measuring labour migration after apartheid: Patterns and trends — Dorrit Posel
3.Rural-urban migration as a means of getting ahead — Justin Visagie and Ivan Turok
4.Informal settlements as staging posts for urbanisation in post-apartheid South Africa — Catherine Ndinda and Tidings Ndhlovu
5.What does labour migration mean for families? Children's mobility in the context ofmaternal migration — Katharine Hall and Dorrit Posel
6.Distance and duality: Migration, family and the meaning of home for Eastern Capemigrants — Monde Makiwane and Ntombizonke A Gumede
7.KwaMashu Hostel: Rural-urban interconnections in KwaZulu-Natal — Nomkhosi Xulu-Gama
8.From 'living wage' to 'family wage': Platinum lives and the contemporary mineworkers'movement (2012-2017) — Luke Sinwell
9.Migrant women in South Africa's platinum belt: Negotiating different conceptions offemininities — Asanda-Jonas Benya
10.How labour migration works in the space economy: Labour markets, migration tracks andhomelessness as an indicator of failure in Marikana — Catherine Cross, Catherine Ndinda, S Joseph Makola and Nthabiseng Sello
11.Marikana revisited: Migrant culture, ethnicity and African nationalism in South Africa — Leslie Bank
Part 2: Double-rootedness and rural regimes of value
12.Agricultural production, the household 'development cycle' and migrant remittances: Continuities and change in the Eastern Cape hinterland — Michael Rogan
13.Migrancy and the differentiated agrarian landscapes: Land use, farming and the reproduction of the homestead in the Eastern Cape — Paul Hebinck
14.Cattle after migrant labour: Emerging markets and changing regimes of value in rural South Africa — Leslie Bank and Mike Kenyon
15.Double-rooted families: The circulation of hidden resources between urban and rural South Africa — Adam Perry
16.Displaced urbanism: City shack life and the citizenship of the suburban house in the rural Transkei — Leslie Bank
17.Changing small-town economies in the Eastern Cape - Michael Aliber and Nqaba B Nikelo
18.Harnessing the ancestors: Uncertainty and ritual practice in the Eastern Cape — Andrew Ainslie
19.Entangled in patriarchy: Migrants, men and matrifocality after apartheid — Leslie Bank
About the authors
Index
