Migrating into segregated majority-black inner cities: Racialised settlement patterns of African migrants in Pretoria, South Africa

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Scholars examining racial residential segregation11Residential segregation is understood as a physical separation of racially defined social groups within an urban or metropolitan area; within this paper, it refers to majority-Black urban neighbourhoods in Pretoria city. in South Africa have paid little attention to the racialised settlement patterns and lived experiences of Black African migrants in post-apartheid South Africa. Even though immigration to South Africa from the African continent has increased for over two decades, their racially segregated lived world in inner-cities is scarcely investigated. Using everyday naturalistic observation, I focus my analysis on spatial settlement and racially structured lived experiences of African migrants in inner-city neighbourhoods of Pretoria, namely Pretoria Central, Arcadia, and Sunnyside. My everyday observations of the all-Black neighbourhoods in Pretoria began from 2008 until 2020 where I was resident. Low income Black African migrants concentrate and socially interact within Black-majority neighbourhoods in Pretoria physically and socially segregated from other racial groups. The racialised lived experiences of Black African migrants in Pretoria reflects South Africa's neoliberal migration policies in which low income migrants of African descent tend to concentrate in inner city ghettos segregated from affluent and relatively racially integrated suburbs surrounding inner cities.