In this report, we review the evidence for the linkages between migrant remittances and the social welfare of receiving households, communities and countries, as well as remitters themselves. In LMICs, where public forms of social welfare measures have …

The character, drivers, impacts and policy responses to xenophobia have been topics of recurrent research interest in recent decades, most of it focused on negative attitudes towards and the discriminatory treatment of migrants in Europe and North Amer …

This paper critically reviews the current state of knowledge about undocumented migration and irregular employment in South Africa as a baseline exercise. It begins with an overview of the major causes of the upsurge in migration to South Africa from n …

The protracted economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe led directly to a major increase in mixed migration flows to South Africa. Migrants were drawn from every sector of society, all education and skill levels, equal numbers of both sexes, and all a …

Cash remittances have grown rapidly over the past two decades and are now at an all-time high. The World Bank estimates that international remittances reached USD436 billion in 2014, and predicts that they will increase to USD601 billion in 2016. Studi …

This report began with the recent military-style assault on informal traders, both migrant and South African, at the Cape Town railway station. While this whole operation seemed like massive overkill and certainly mystified the traders themselves (apar …

“While increasing attention is being paid to the drivers and forms of entrepreneurship in informal economies, much less of this policy and research focus is directed at understanding the links between mobility and informality. This report examines the …

“Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has experienced a significant outflow of health professionals. The out-migration of health professionals from the country is part of a broader global trend of health professional migration from the Global South …

“South Africa provides an important case study of how citizen attitudes and behaviours materially affect the business climate for migrant entrepreneurs. Trying to run a business in the informal economy is an especially hazardous undertaking in South Af …

“Violent xenophobia has become a regular feature of South African life. Everyday animosity frequently spills over into violence against individual migrants and refugees and their economic enterprises. Some of these incidents reach the scrutiny of the m …

Conventional wisdom holds that the ‘brain drain’ of health professionals from Africa is deeply damaging to the continent. Recently, a group of North American and European neo-liberal economists has challenged this conventional wisdom, variously arguing …

Migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa has been extremely well-documented by researchers. In this paper, we suggest that there is a need to periodize these migration flows in order to understand how and why they have changed over time, not simply in t …

Two issues have recently risen to the top of the international development agenda: (a) Food Security; and (b) Migration and Development. Each has its own global agency champions, international gatherings, national line ministries and body of research. …

The negative attitudes of South Africans towards non-citizens, migrants and refugees have been documented in several recent studies. Xenophobia has been officially recognized as a major problem by the state and steps have been taken by government and t …