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Notes & Documents n°38

Migration in post-apartheid South Africa: challenges and questions to policy-makers

Aurelia Wa Kabwe-Segatti, avec la collaboration de Loren Landau

International migration is a highly sensitive subject in South Africa. Thirteen years after the end of apartheid, the country has become a new Eldorado for the world’s migrants and refugees. The African National Congress (ANC) government has stated that South Africa needs to attract highly-skilled migrants to work in key sectors of the economy and has identified international migration, including from other African countries, as crucial to South Africa’s future development. Yet large numbers of South Africans live in great poverty, and many South Africans feel that the government should prioritize its own citizens’ employment needs.

The present volume studies some key aspects of South Africa’s migration experience: from the changes in official attitudes throughout the twentieth century, indicating the roots of contemporary ideas and dilemmas, to the South African government’s capacity to manage and reform the South African migration

situation today. How can foreign skilled labour be attracted without aggravating the already unbalanced structure of the South African labour market? How can a State with little capacity and historical commitments to a human rights culture manage undocumented migration? How do South African cities and their municipalities cope with the actual management of international migration on the ground?