IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/59443.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Labour, lodging and linkages: migrant women's experience in South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Phillips, Laura
  • James, Deborah

Abstract

This historiographical overview examines the literature on women migrants in South Africa, arguing that it is important to consider domestic struggles and their impact on women’s urban experiences within and beyond the workplace in order to understand the unfolding of the migrant labour system in the 20th and 21st centuries. Looking at writing on pre-1994 migrancy, it highlights women’s experiences in the workplace, in the residential spaces they occupy, and in their associational life. We also draw out some of the major trends in the post-1994 period, focusing in particular on scholarship that considers HIV/AIDS. Migrant women, we argue, are neither simply home-based nor town-linked; rather their experiences and struggles provide the means to accommodate both while also transforming these polarities.

Suggested Citation

  • Phillips, Laura & James, Deborah, 2014. "Labour, lodging and linkages: migrant women's experience in South Africa," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 59443, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:59443
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/59443/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carol S Camlin & Victoria Hosegood & Marie-Louise Newell & Nuala McGrath & Till Bärnighausen & Rachel C Snow, 2010. "Gender, Migration and HIV in Rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(7), pages 1-10, July.
    2. Leslie Bank, 1999. "Men with Cookers: Transformations in Migrant Culture, Domesticity and Identity in Duncan Village, East London," Journal of Southern African Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(3), pages 393-416, September.
    3. Daniela Casale & Dorrit Posel, 2002. "The Continued Feminisation Of The Labour Force In South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 70(1), pages 156-184, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Odile Mackett, 2022. "Decent Work in the South African Macroeconomy: Who are The Winners and Losers?," Humanistic Management Journal, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 277-305, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Camlin, Carol S. & Kwena, Zachary A. & Dworkin, Shari L. & Cohen, Craig R. & Bukusi, Elizabeth A., 2014. "“She mixes her business”: HIV transmission and acquisition risks among female migrants in western Kenya," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 146-156.
    2. Dorrit Posel & Daniela Casale, 2003. "What Has Been Happening To Internal Labour Migration In South Africa, 1993–1999?," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 71(3), pages 455-479, September.
    3. Olivier Bargain & Prudence Kwenda & Miracle Ntuli, 2017. "Gender bias and the intrahousehold distribution of resources: Evidence from African nuclear households in South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series 071, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Benhura, Miracle, 2007. "Determinants of South African Women’s Labour Force Participation, 1995–2004," IZA Discussion Papers 3119, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Murray Leibbrandt & James Levinsohn & Justin McCrary, 2005. "Incomes in South Africa Since the Fall of Apartheid," NBER Working Papers 11384, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Haroon Bhorat & Karmen Naidoo & Morné Oosthuizen & Kavisha Pillay, 2015. "Demographic, employment, and wage trends in South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series 141, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. Pushkar Maitra & Ranjan Ray, 2006. "Household expenditure patterns and resource pooling: evidence of changes in post-apartheid South Africa," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 4(4), pages 325-347, December.
    8. Ronelle Burger & Marisa Coetzee & Carina van der Watt, 2013. "Estimating the benefits of linking ties in a deeply divided society: considering the relationship between domestic workers and their employers in South Africa," Working Papers 18/2013, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    9. Rulof Burger & Servaas Berg & Dieter Fintel, 2015. "The Unintended Consequences of Education Policies on South African Participation and Unemployment," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 83(1), pages 74-100, March.
    10. Rulof Burger & Ingrid Woolard, 2005. "The State of the Labour Market in South Africa after the First Decade of Democracy," SALDRU/CSSR Working Papers 133, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    11. Flatø, Martin & Muttarak, Raya & Pelser, André, 2017. "Women, Weather, and Woes: The Triangular Dynamics of Female-Headed Households, Economic Vulnerability, and Climate Variability in South Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 41-62.
    12. Coast, Ernestina, 2006. "Local understandings of, and responses to, HIV: Rural-urban migrants in Tanzania," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(4), pages 1000-1010, August.
    13. Erik Bähre, 2020. "Wealth‐in‐people and practical rationality: Aspirations and decisions about money in South Africa," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 267-278, June.
    14. Dieter von Fintel & Eldridge Moses, 2017. "Migration and gender in South Africa: following bright lights and the fortunes of others?," Working Papers 09/2017, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics, revised 2018.
    15. Anna McCord, 2004. "Public works: Policy expectations and programme realities," SALDRU/CSSR Working Papers 079, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    16. Michael Rogan, 2012. "Poverty and headship in post-apartheid South Africa, 1997-2008," Working Papers 288, Economic Research Southern Africa.
    17. Timothy Hinks, 2012. "Fractionalization and well-being: Evidence from a new South African data set," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(3), pages 253-271, December.
    18. Martin Wittenberg, 2007. "Dissecting post-apartheid labour market developments: Decomposing a discrete choice model while dealing with unobservables," Working Papers 046, Economic Research Southern Africa.
    19. Hunter, Mark, 2007. "The changing political economy of sex in South Africa: The significance of unemployment and inequalities to the scale of the AIDS pandemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 689-700, February.
    20. Carol S Camlin & Victoria Hosegood & Marie-Louise Newell & Nuala McGrath & Till Bärnighausen & Rachel C Snow, 2010. "Gender, Migration and HIV in Rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(7), pages 1-10, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    gender; historiography; migrancy; women; housing; apartheid; associational life; informal work; domestic work; factory work; HIV/AIDS;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:59443. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.