Abstract
Governance of international migration, which involves cross-border movement of people from adjoining countries and intra – and extra-regional non-adjoining countries, is currently a topical global issue. South-North and South-South are the commonest directional migratory flows; eighty percent of the latter is cross-border, a widespread phenomenon within the Southern African Development Community. Over the years, the popular view in South Africa has been that African migrants mainly negatively impact the country socio-economically. The presence of African migrants triggered two major xenophobic attacks in 2008 and 2015. The research question addressed in this article is: what are the socio-economic impacts of African migrants on South Africa? Critical in-depth analysis of literature, empirical studies and official documents indicate positive impacts co-exist with negative ones. The former include ‘brain gain’ from highly-qualified African academics in instruction/research positions in universities, provision of essential services by African medical personnel in the public health system, job creation and development of business skills by African small-business owners/entrepreneurs and provision of essential services by semi-skilled/unskilled African migrants to the agricultural, construction and domestic services sectors. Governance of migration informed by the country’s need for ‘scarce and critical skills’, and entrepreneurial acumen is recommended. Keywords : Brain Drain and Brain Gain, Development, Socio-economic Impacts, Migration, Push and Pull Factors, South Africa
Highlights
Governance of international migration is currently a topical issue, underpinned by exodus of war-affected Syrians to Europe reported to be at an unprecedented migratory scale since the Second World War, the continuing crossing of thousands of Africans across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe and the burning issue of immigration in the United States of America
This means different countries belong to the global North or global South depending on which definition is adopted, which has implications for statistics used in discussing South-South migration (Global Forum on Migration and Development, 2012)
Kalitanyi and Visser’s (2010) study to ascertain whether African migrants steal jobs from South Africans or create their own was based on data from 120 migrant entrepreneurs running businesses in Bellville, Cape Town’s Foreshore, Nyanga and Wynberg and seven organisations providing services, advice and support to migrants based in Cape Town
Summary
Governance of international migration is currently a topical issue, underpinned by exodus of war-affected Syrians to Europe reported to be at an unprecedented migratory scale since the Second World War, the continuing crossing of thousands of Africans across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe and the burning issue of immigration in the United States of America. According to Blakewell (2009), the World Bank defines the global South as comprising all countries that are not ‘high – income’, equating the global South to less and least developed regions, while the United Nations Development Programme sees it as countries that lack a very high human development index. This means different countries belong to the global North or global South depending on which definition is adopted, which has implications for statistics used in discussing South-South migration (Global Forum on Migration and Development, 2012). Given the current shortage of ‘scarce and critical skills’, section four provides recommendations on governance of migration to facilitate the country’s development
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