Chapter 1 One can fully understand the meaning of immigration in South Africa, and of South African attitudes toward it, only with reference to the history of the coun- try and the Southern African region. Although exploitative migration practices have been central to the region for more than a century, the African National Congress (ANC) did not place immigration policy high on its reform agenda in the early 1990s. Despite Ruth First’s pioneering 1983 book and a consistent Marxist analysis of the migrant labor system, most evident within the South African Communist Party, there was no clear party line clarifying what the gov- ernment’s position should be in addressing profound, ongoing changes in the region’s migratory system. From the initial sociodemocratic Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) through the neoliberal turn initiated with the adoption of the Growth, Employment and Redistribution Programme (GEAR) in 1996 to the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative (ASGISA) launched in 2006, the government failed to place migration among key issues for reform or to consider it a primary tool in the country’s development strategy. Migra- tion consequently remained a largely unacknowledged socioeconomic process on which the region’s economy (and South Africa’s most competitive sectors) relied. For policy makers, migration and immigration were not simply about bor- der control and access to jobs in South Africa. Internationally, migration and immigration were embedded in bilateral agreements that sometimes dated back to the colonial era. Although exploitative, these arrangements were deeply ingrained in regional populations’ livelihood strategies. Any shift in policy would therefore draw attention to the unequal relations within the region and threaten the welfare of millions of people. Domestically, migration policy had been the product of ongoing, if opaque, negotiations with the private sector. In Reforming South African Immigration Policy in the Postapartheid Period (1990–2010) Aurelia Segatti
Reforming South African Immigration Policy in the Postapartheid Period (1990–2010)
Jul 11, 2023
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