Abstract
Changes in immigration policy and legislation have the power to shape and alter the gendering of migration in significant ways, and can have a dramatic effect on the lives and relationships of the men, women and families involved. In this paper, we examine the provisions of the new Immigration Act introduced in South Africa in 2002. The Act, which replaces the outdated Aliens Control Act of 1991, gives considerable cause for concern on gender grounds. Foremost, the Act entrenches a system of male-dominated regional labour migration that has its origins in the 19th-century discovery of gold and diamonds. The male bias in the work permit and other employment-based categories along with the limits to family reunification for those entering for work are likely in effect to discriminate against women to a greater extent than men. While similar gender concerns are common to most immigration policy regimes around the world, the particular circumstances of the South African case, where both skilled and unskilled migration streams are heavily male-dominated, makes them especially acute here. This paper contextualizes migration regimes in South Africa and examines in detail the likely implications of the new Immigration Act.
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Notes
As such they run counter to the trend in international migration where increasing competition for skilled migrant labour has led to increasing relaxation of rules pertaining to family reunification.
This mimics the American EB1 and EB2 categories and the British Highly Skilled Migrant Programme, where esteem is used to qualify for immigration.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Southern African Migration Project (SAMP) and its funders, the Canadian International Development Agency and the UK's Department for International Development, for support of their work on migration policy transformation in Southern Africa. Comments from anonymous reviewers were extremely helpful in developing and refining the paper.
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Dodson, B., Crush, J. A report on gender discrimination in South Africa's 2002 Immigration Act: masculinizing the migrant. Fem Rev 77, 96–119 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400158
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400158