Examining Labor Migration Policy in South Africa

Source: World Policy Blog - By Dr. Zaheera Jinnah, 20/10/2015

Migrating for work is one of the oldest and most common forms of
migration in the world. According to the International Labour
Organization (ILO) there are approximately 232 million migrant workers
in the world today. For workers, migration represents an opportunity
to find work, diversify skills and experience, and remit earnings to
support families and households at home. For employers and host
countries, migrant workers are an important source of labor that the
domestic market cannot provide in terms of either numbers or skills or
both. The UNGMD (global migration database) estimates that in 2013,
approximately 31 million migrants originated from Africa, of who half
remained on the continent.


However, the regulation of migration, and regional labor migration in
particular, in South Africa in the post-apartheid era is largely
inefficient in recognizing and redressing a century of exploitation,
and in addressing the contemporary reality of migration trends in the
region. In fact it has achieved the contrary: the Immigration Act and
its subsequent amendments and rules provide very little opportunity or
access for low skilled migrants to enter and work legally in the
country. Moreover, the actions and approach of an increasingly
bureaucratic and inefficient ministry tasked to regulate migration
results in widespread corruption in South African immigration
systems.


Alongside this, in official ANC documents and public statements there
has been a growing positioning of migration as a problem that needs to
be stopped; and a discourse stating that migrants and asylum seekers
need to be kept out as they are a threat to jobs, to public safety,
and to the overall condition of life in South Africa. These sentiments
fly in the face of the inclusive and progressive South African
Constitution which makes little reference to nationality or
citizenship; yet somehow these negative and dangerous statements
linger and find resonance with masses of people who are dissatisfied
with poor service delivery, high unemployment levels, and lack of
housing, and who are looking for a convenient scapegoat to pin their
dissatisfaction on.


The result is a weakly designed immigration policy, that ignores the
reality and potential benefit of regional migration, and which forces
many into irregular migration. At the same time, zealous policing of
migration creates extra-legal and extra-judicial processes of entry
into the country and informal access to work and other services such
as housing.


Yet it need not be this way. Available data suggest that there is no
`influx` of migrants into South Africa. Only 3 to 4 percent of the
country`s population is foreign born, and most are actively productive
in the labor market. Based on research coordinated by the African
Centre for Migration & Society, at Wits University, as well as
evidence from global studies, we already can demonstrate that
non-nationals contribute in diverse ways to the local economy, for
example, through the provision of much needed goods and services in
townships at competitive prices, or through the emerging role migrant
workers play in sectors such as domestic work, hospitality and public
health care.


Some of our findings include:
• Migrants bring a range of skills and services, which are beneficial
to the diversification, and development of the economy. In a labor
force that is as poorly educated and skilled as the South African one,
skilled migrants are desperately sought not just for the provision of
much needed skills but also to grow the economy.


• 24 percent of migrants have completed matric and a further 13
percent hold a tertiary education qualification (compared to just 10
percent of the national average for the latter).


• In the public health care sector, about 1.5 percent or 2,640 (out of
173,080) qualified staff are foreign nationals with a higher
concentration of 13 percent amongst medical practitioners. 38 percent
of all foreign-born medical personnel are from SADC countries and 26
percent are from the rest of Africa.


• Migrants in South Africa tend to engage in entrepreneurship
activities. Again data shows that 21 percent of migrants are `own
account workers` and 11 percent employ others, compared to overall
national averages of 9 percent and 6 percent respectively.


• In South Africa migrant workers provide much needed labor in certain
sectors. For instance, 17 percent of all migrants are working in the
crafts sector; and a further 21 percent in services or sales; 13
percent of all domestic workers are migrants.


• Migrant workers can engage in knowledge and skills transfer
programmes that can alleviate the critical skills shortages faced by
the country.


What South Africa needs is less talk of reducing migration, of
associating migrants with negative outcomes, or of sending illegal
migrants home. Instead it requires a better informed, cohesive and
regionally responsive labor migration policy framework that recognizes
the socio-economic challenges of the country and develops provisions
that will ensure that migrant workers contribute to, rather than work
on the periphery of, national economic and labor objectives.


In the current framework there are 1.2 million migrant workers, who
face an uphill battle in entering the country, getting their
qualifications recognized, and finding work that is not exploitative
or abusive. This results in a deterioration of labor conditions,
hostility amongst workers and, as we have seen, xenophobia. The
Department of Home Affairs knows these challenges and risks
well.

However, their response, while well meaning, has been
misguided. It has ploughed energy and resources into stopping
migration, through increased deportations, greater border controls and
security, and increased policing of irregular migrants.


Rather than finding ways to end migration, a process that is as old as
human history, and unlikely to end, the South African government
should rather work with stakeholders such as the Department of Labour,
the ILO, trade unions and others to develop, facilitate, and manage an
effective labor migration regime that protects workers, and benefits
the economy. Until this is in place there is a real risk that
conditions for all workers in the country will worsen, which will
undermine the substantial progress on labor policy that has taken
place since 1994, that ongoing xenophobic attacks will continue, and
that key South African constitutional principles of transparency and
the rule of law will be diminished.