Skip to content

Migration, Remittances and Development in Southern Africa

Literature › Works

Wade Pendleton; Jonathan Crush; Eugene Campbell; Thuso Green; Hamilton Simelane; Daniel Tevera; Fion de Vletter (2006). Migration, Remittances and Development in Southern Africa. Southern African Migration Project, Migration Policy Series No. 44. Idasa / Southern African Research Centre, Queen's University (SAMP).
Type report
Scope Post-1994 South African economy
Method survey fieldwork
Period studied 2004–2005
Regions Botswana, Lesotho, Southern Mozambique, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, South Africa (as destination)
Themes mining migrant labour, inequality poverty unemployment, labour markets wages, demography urbanisation, methods data sources, comparative theory
Citation key pendleton2006

Argument

Using the 2004-5 Migration and Remittances Survey (MARS) of five SADC countries, the report argues that remittances in cash and goods are a major income source for migrant-sending households and are central to their survival. Households spend them overwhelmingly on food and other basic consumption, with little reinvestment, so remittances 'keep poverty at bay' but show little conventional developmental value. It also finds that today's migrants are older, married, often household heads and from families with a migration tradition, with South Africa the overwhelmingly dominant destination. The argument rests on descriptive tabulation of survey data, not causal modelling, and it joins the wider debate between optimistic and pessimistic views of remittances.

Evidence and method

MARS household survey in 2004-5: 4,700 randomly selected households with current or past cross-border migrants, information on almost 30,000 people, plus case studies and focus groups. Income and expenditure tables, a Lived Poverty Index and a food poverty index, comparison with Afrobarometer data, and World Bank and OECD remittance statistics. Currency converted to rand.

Findings

  • South Africa is the dominant destination for migrants from four of the five countries surveyed. (p. 16)

    South Africa plays a central role in the cross-border migration picture with 86% of the total number of migrants currently working there (Table 8). The proportion is over 95% in all countries except Zimbabwe.

  • Most migrants are male, though Zimbabwe and Lesotho have more female migrants. (p. 14)

    In Botswana, Mozambique and Swaziland over 80% of migrants are male (84.5%). The majority of female migrants are from Zimbabwe (44% of the total from that country)

  • The migrant cohort is older and often household heads, so migration is now a career rather than a youthful phase. (p. 15)

    Migration, in other words, has become a livelihood strategy of the middle-aged.

  • Migration is intergenerational: about half of migrants have parents who were also cross-border migrants. (p. 16)

    About 50% of migrants reported that their parents had been cross-border migrants; the percentages were highest in Lesotho (76%) and Mozambique (66%).

  • Mine work remains the most common occupation in four of the five countries despite sectoral decline. (p. 18)

    Minework was the most frequently cited occupation of international migrants from Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, and Swaziland, despite the recent decline in job opportunities in that sector in South Africa

  • Agriculture employs very few cross-border migrants in the sample. (p. 18)

    Perhaps surprisingly, given the belief that the South African agricultural sector employs large numbers of migrants, only 1.3% of the total sample worked in that sector.

  • Cash remittances are received by most migrant-sending households, with large variation in median amounts. (p. 21)

    The vast majority (85%) of the migrant-sending households in all the surveyed countries receive cash remittances. This ranges from a low of 64% of households in the case of Swaziland to a high of 95% in the case of Lesotho

  • Remittances are on a par with wages in median value and exceed all other income sources when cash and goods are combined. (p. 23)

    Across the region as a whole, annual median income from wage employment and cash remittances is the same (at R4,800), followed by business income (R2,400), pensions (R2,038), casual work (R1,200), and remittance of goods (value R911).

  • Farm income is marginal for these households. (p. 25)

    Just 237 of the 3,246 households receive any income from the sale of farm products, averaging only R1,541 per annum.

  • Most migrants remit by carrying money themselves or via friends, so formal-channel costs are little complained of in the region. (p. 25)

    The most popular ways of bringing money home are for the migrants to bring it themselves (average 47%), send it via a friend/co-worker (average 26%) or through the post office (average 7%)

  • Spending is dominated by food and basic consumption, with little investment. (p. 30)

    consumption-spending (for necessities not luxuries) constitutes the pre-dominant usage of household income, a pattern observed in many other parts of the world.

  • The survey finds minimal reinvestment of income and widespread lack of savings. (p. 33)

    The survey showed very little evidence of re-investment of income (remittance and otherwise) in entrepreneurial or other income-generating activity.

  • Overall conclusion: remittances alleviate poverty but have little conventional developmental value. (p. 40)

    Remittances in cash and kind keep poverty at bay but they do not do much else. There is very little evidence, as yet, that remittances in Southern Africa have developmental value, as conventionally defined.