Immigrant Integration in the global south: The case of urban South Africa

• In Event: 1146 - South-South Migration

Abstract

As U.S. and Europe-based work continues to dominate the theory and study of immigrant integration, it is yet largely unknown how well migrant experiences in the Global South fit these expectations. Meanwhile, migration within and to the global South is appreciable, and the South’s diverse histories, geographies and cultures make immigrant integration complex. Here, we take the specific case of a highly urbanized, economically vibrant region of South Africa, the Gauteng Province, and exploit rich cross-sectional data to examine multiple dimensions of migrant and native well-being and processes of integration. We want to understand how integration of international and internal migrants in urban South Africa fits into existing theories of migrant assimilation, and how these processes appear to be related to race. We argue that a systematic examination of individuals across categories of race, migrant status, and birthplace is necessary to better understand the significance of social and racial boundaries in urban South Africa. We find that, for the most part, both international and internal migrants experience positive socioeconomic trajectories with time in Gauteng. Race does condition socioeconomic standing and health at any point in time. For certain outcomes, international migrants—net of other controls—exhibit more optimistic trajectories. Our results lead us to consider a broad generalization of migration empirical regularities and theory, particularly the way that various indicators of integration generally improve over time and how these trajectories are conditioned—in the Global North and the Global South—by racial and ethnic context of the setting.

Authors

• Mao-Mei Liu, University of California Berkeley

• Michael J. White, Brown University