Open AccessSecurity Risk and Xenophobia in the Urban Informal Sector
Author(s) -
Sujata Ramachandran,
Jonathan Crush,
Godfrey Tawodzera
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
african human mobility review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2411-6955
pISSN - 2410-7972
DOI - 10.14426/ahmr.v3i2.830
Subject(s) - xenophobia , informal sector , victimisation , survey data collection , political science , refugee , migrant workers , security forces , criminology , development economics , sociology , economic growth , racism , human factors and ergonomics , poison control , economics , law , politics , medicine , statistics , environmental health , mathematics
Whenever there are violent attacks on refugee and migrant businesses in South Africa's informal sector, politicians, officials and commissions of enquiry deny that xenophobia is a driving force or indeed exists at all in the county. A new strain of nativist research in South Africa does not deny the existence of xenophobia but argues that it is an insignificant factor in the violence. It is argued that because South African and non-South African enterprises are equally at risk, the reasons for the violence are internal to the sector itself. This paper critiques this position on the basis of the results of a survey of over 2,000 enterprises in the contrasting geographical sites of Cape Town and small town Limpopo. The survey results reported in this paper focus on security risks and the experience of victimisation and the experience of the two groups of enterprise operator are systematically compared.