Abstract
The past twenty years have seen significant changes in the demographic and entrepreneurial landscapes of South African cities and towns. Immigrants, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers have become an increasing part of cities and smaller conurbations. The province of Gauteng, home to the largest proportion of people born outside South Africa, is the country’s commercial hub. International migrants are an integral part of entrepreneurship in the province, as wholesalers, retailers and participants in the informal sector. Post-1994 South Africa has seen a rise in outbreaks xenophobia and entrepreneurs have often been the target of attacks, facing looting, assault and death. This chapter explores international-migrant informal-sector entrepreneurship in the province. It examines what entrepreneurs do and their interactions with the formal sector, South African entrepreneurs and the state. It is based on a 2014 survey of international migrant and South African entrepreneurs.
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Notes
- 1.
International migrant is used to refer to immigrants, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants regardless of status.
- 2.
The 2014 survey was part of a wider project looking at informality in four southern African cities (Cape Town, Johannesburg, Harare and Maputo). Interviews with international-migrant entrepreneurs in Johannesburg were funded by the International Development Research Centre through the Southern African Migration Programme and the African Centre for Cities. Interviews with South Africans and in other places in Gauteng were funded by the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO). As all research in Gauteng was designed and undertaken by the GCRO, here it is referred to as the GCRO 2014 survey.
- 3.
For further information on the GCRO 2014 survey and access to data from the Gauteng City-Region Observatory Quality of Life surveys (2009, 2013, 2015, 2017) see www.gcro.ac.za.
- 4.
The GCRO QoL 2015 survey found 43% of Gauteng born, 46% of internal migrants and 40% of international-migrant informal-sector entrepreneurs were women.
- 5.
The GCRO QoL 2015 survey found: 1% of the Gauteng born, 3% of internal migrants and 4% of international migrants had no education; 10% of the Gauteng born, 18% of internal migrants and 21% of international migrants only had primary; 33% of all groups had incomplete secondary; 31% of the Gauteng born, 30% of internal migrants and 17% of international migrants had matriculated; and 23% of the Gauteng born, 16% of internal migrants and 17% of international migrants had at least some tertiary education.
- 6.
The GCRO QoL 2015 survey found 31% of South African migrant informal business owners came from Limpopo, 17% from KwaZulu Natal and Mpumalanga respectively, 12% from the Eastern Cape and Free State, respectively, 8% from the North West and 1% from the Northern Cape and Western Cape respectively. International-migrant entrepreneurs came from the SADC (77%), the rest of Africa outside the SADC (16%), South Asia (2%), Asia (1%) and other countries (4%).
- 7.
In the GCRO QoL 2015 survey, 37% of all informal sector business owners employed people.
- 8.
The GCRO QoL 2015 survey found 25% of South Africans said ‘send all foreigners home’; 58% that ‘legal foreigners are OK’; and 18% that ‘foreigners should be allowed to stay’. In a separate question, 4% of South Africans said it was ‘OK to physically attack foreigners to make them leave’.
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Peberdy, S.A. (2021). De-Bunking Myths? International Migrants, Entrepreneurship and the Informal Sector in Gauteng, South Africa. In: Liu, C.Y. (eds) Immigrant Entrepreneurship in Cities. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50363-5_6
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