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What Has Been Happening to Internal Labour Migration in South Africa, 1993-1999?

Literature › Works

Dorrit Posel; Daniela Casale (2003). What Has Been Happening to Internal Labour Migration in South Africa, 1993-1999?. The South African Journal of Economics, Vol. 71(3). Economic Society of South Africa.
Type journal article
Scope Post-1994 South African economy
Method mixed
Period studied 1993–1999
Regions South Africa, rural African households, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo (Northern Province), Eastern Cape
Themes mining migrant labour, demography urbanisation, labour markets wages, inequality poverty unemployment, transition post apartheid, methods data sources, bantustans removals influx
Citation key posel2003

Argument

Using the 1993 PSLSD and the 1995, 1997 and 1999 October Household Surveys, the paper asks whether temporary labour migration declined once influx control ended. It finds that migrant labour remains an important feature of the labour market and that migration from rural African households has increased. The rise is driven by women, and it coincides with falling marriage rates and fewer employed men living in rural households. Most migrants still stay tied to their origin households through remittances. The authors stress that the analysis is largely descriptive and suggestive because of weak and inconsistent survey coverage of migrants.

Evidence and method

Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development (PSLSD) 1993 (about 9000 households) and Statistics South Africa October Household Surveys of 1995, 1997 and 1999 (about 30 000 households each). A probit regression on 1993 PSLSD data for rural African women aged 15-60 (6041 observations), plus descriptive tables on households, age, gender, marital status and remittances. Qualitative regional studies (Cross et al, James, Todes, Bank, Dodson) are used as supporting context.

Findings

  • Migrant labour remains important and has grown from African rural households, driven by women. (p. 23)

    Labour migration from African rural households has increased over the last decade, as has the proportion of these households receiving remittance income from migrant workers.

  • The proportion of rural African households with at least one migrant worker rose between 1993 and 1997/1999 (the 1995 figure is regarded as an undercount). (p. 6)

    Rural African households 32.6 -- 37.6 35.8

  • Overall the share of African adults who are migrants was stable, with a small rural increase driven by women. (p. 8)

    Overall, there was little change in the percentage of all African adults (aged 15 years and older) reported as migrant workers between 1993 and 1999.

  • Women's share of African migrant workers rose from about 30% to about 34%. (p. 9)

    in 1993, an estimated 30 per cent of African migrant workers in South Africa were women; by 1999, this had increased to approximately 34 percent of migrant workers.

  • Women's unemployment is high and rising, and the rise in female migration does not simply reflect a greater demand for female labour. (p. 11)

    we estimated that in 1995, some 38 per cent of all economically active women and 23 per cent of all economically active men were broadly unemployed; in 1999, this had increased to 47 per cent and 32 per cent respectively.

  • The probit results show that married women, and women in households with resident employed men, were less likely to migrate in 1993. (p. 14)

    women who were married were significantly less likely than other African rural women to be migrant workers. Second, women were also less likely to migrate from households in which employed men were resident household members.

  • Rural households with female migrants had markedly fewer resident employed men, and the average number of such men fell over time. (p. 15)

    households with female migrant workers contained significantly fewer employed men than households in which no women were reported as migrant workers.

  • Marriage among African women declined between 1993 and 1999. (p. 14)

    Married 34.6 34.4 31.2 30.2

  • Migration destinations are not predominantly urban: in 1995 more than half of migrants' destination households were rural or semi-urban, and women were more likely than men to be in them. (p. 10)

    In 1995, more than half of the households to which people had migrated were located in rural (including semi-urban) areas.

  • A growing share of migrant-sending rural households receive remittances, and nominal remittances grew. (p. 21)

    In 1993, for example, approximately 79 per cent of all rural African households with migrant workers received remittance income; in 1999 this had increased to 85 per cent.

  • The 1995 OHS undercounts migrants because it records them at the destination household rather than the household of origin. (p. 7)

    It seems that the recording of migrant workers at the households to which they have migrated leads to an estimation of labour migration that is less than that derived by counting labour migrants at the households from which migration has occurred.