cities

(SACN, 2014a: 15). Post-1994, Johannesburg has become the destination of most cross-border and
internal migrants, whereas Cape Town attracts people from cities in the Eastern Cape.
The inner city acts as an arrival area for migrants from foreign countries, as well as from the rest of
South Africa (Harrison and Todes, 2013) with some 50% of residents in “urban core” areas in Gauteng
having moved to the inner city in the last 15 years (Venter, 2012). The inner city enables access to
employment and economic activity (Cross, 2010, 2011; Venter, 2012), particularly for low-income
earning women working as traders and domestic workers (Todes, 2003).
A study on social value chains examined migration and rural-urban spatial linkages at the household
scale and identified three categories (SACN, 2014c):
1. Rural-committed people: those who want to stay in the rural sector and identify strongly with
their local settlement regardless of their migration history.
2. Rural-mobile people: those currently living in rural areas who consider themselves relatively
footloose, are not strongly rooted in the present settlement, have urban aspirations and may be
edging toward moving into or closer to larger towns or cities.
3. Metro migrants: rural-born people who are now living or working long-term in cities, where
they expect to remain and eventually obtain high-quality urban housing.
Category 3 represents those who are “most often perceived as threats to the city’s financial
sustainability by the city administrations” (SACN, 2015c: 47). Local governments, however, need to
prepare to receive and develop livelihood opportunities for these migrants, who are mostly young and
vulnerable.
4
Although individuals and households in South Africa are moving into cities where jobs and other
opportunities are being created and household incomes are higher, this does not mean that cities are
embracing them and their contributions. Furthermore, since 1994, migration patterns in South African
cities have changed. Urban migrants include not only job-seekers (as was the case pre-democracy) but
also qualified professionals, students and women who engage the city differently (Balbo and Marconi,
2006). Female migration in particular challenges the territorial approach to urban planning, as women
are not place-bound and so “community participation makes little sense for people constantly moving
between spaces and places” (SACN, 2014a: 15).
The current response to cross-border migration is to focus on “controlling movements of cross border
migrants, through an increasingly restrictive immigration policy of the Department of Home Affairs”
(SACN, 2014a: 16). A major challenge is urban inclusion and cohesion for migrants. Johannesburg
appears to be the only city to explicitly acknowledge and seek to address the complexity and diversity
of urban migrants, perhaps because of its intensive in-migration challenges. It has established the
Johannesburg Migrant Advisory Council, the Johannesburg Migrant Advisory Panel and the City of
Johannesburg’s Migration Unit (ibid). However, apart from one migration study (City of Cape Town,
2006), none of the other cities appear to be looking at dealing with cross-border or internal migration
through formal planning policies or structures.
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