Abstract
Abstract The disruption of family life is one of the important legacies of South Africa’s colonial and apartheid history. Families were undermined by deliberate strategies implemented through the pass laws, forced removals, urban housing policy, and the creation of homelands. Despite the removal of legal restrictions on permanent urban settlement and family co-residence for Africans, patterns of internal and oscillating labor migration have endured, dual or stretched households continue to link urban and rural nodes, children have remained less urbanized than adults, and many grow up without coresident parents. Although children are clearly affected by adult labor migration, they have tended to be ignored in the migration discourse. In this study, we add to the literature by showing how a child lens advances our understanding of the complexities of household arrangements and migration processes for families. In a mixed-methods study, we use nationally representative panel data to describe persistence, and also change, in migration patterns in South Africa when viewed from the perspective of children. We then draw on a detailed case study to explore what factors constrain or permit families to migrate together, or children to join adults at migration destination areas.
Highlights
The disruption of family life is one of the important legacies of South Africa’s colonial and apartheid history
To explore child migration in relation to maternal migration, we use data collected in the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), a survey conducted by the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at the University of Cape Town
Surveys have only limited ability to capture the extent of mobility between households, and the nature of fluidity in and out of households; and they offer at most partial insights into family and social networks
Summary
The disruption of family life is one of the important legacies of South Africa’s colonial and apartheid history. The first question is descriptive and investigates how the migration of children has changed in post-apartheid South Africa, given the absence of legal constraints on family migration and urban settlement. The second research question considers what factors constrain or permit the co-migration of mothers and children, or the migration of children to join mothers at destination areas We explore this question through the lens of a rich qualitative study, which captures decisions about mobility and immobility among a three-generation family. A persistence or increase in temporary female labor migration suggests that children continue to be “left behind” when mothers migrate, indicating that the constraints on family migration are not just in the form of legal restrictions on urban settlement (Posel, 2010; Potts, 2011). We complement these national statistics with a qualitative study which probes the factors that affect the capabilities and aspirations of mothers to migrate with, or without, their children
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