Crackdown on Migrant Workers Fails to Create Jobs for South Africans, Study Shows

WHEN FOREIGN WORKERS LOSE, SOUTH AFRICAN WORKERS DON’T WIN

The coffee shop in Cape Town where Edward now works represents a turning point in his life, but it took years of hardship to reach it. Edward arrived in South Africa from Zimbabwe and took whatever work he could find, starting with cutting sugar cane at 150 Rand a day. That job ended when local protesters successfully demanded that his employer hire South Africans instead of foreigners. He moved to bar work, earning less than minimum wage, then found a barista position that seemed promising until his employer simply stopped paying him.

Without proper documentation, Edward was trapped. He could not report the wage theft to the Department of Labour. His family, including his wife, newborn child, and teenage son, was forced into a shack. Only after his papers came into order did Edward secure stable, adequate employment that could sustain his household.

Edward’s eventual success masks a broader reality: most undocumented foreign workers in South Africa do not recover as he did. The vulnerability created by lack of proper documentation leaves them exposed to systematic exploitation. Anti-foreigner protests and violence have pushed many deeper into the informal economy, where they face wage theft, abuse, and the constant threat of dismissal without recourse. Yet the common assumption underlying these protests rests on a false premise. Making foreign workers more vulnerable does not strengthen the position of South African workers. Instead, the marches and demonstrations reinforce the structural inequalities that generate widespread poverty and extreme income inequality across the entire economy.

The dynamics at work here follow a pattern documented across North America and Europe. Labour markets function in segments. The primary segment contains full-time, well-paying jobs with benefits and security. The secondary segment holds part-time, temporary, low-wage, and insecure work. These two segments have long coexisted in a stable hierarchy, with the secondary segment absorbing economic shocks and performing the low-end service functions that keep the primary segment profitable and stable, even during periods of prolonged crisis like South Africa’s years of low growth and high inequality.

A third segment has emerged at the bottom of this structure: super-exploitable foreign workers without documentation. These workers do not directly compete for jobs in the secondary market. They create an entirely new class of labour that cannot claim rights, cannot report abuse, and can be hired and fired at will. The existence of this third segment does not strengthen the secondary segment. It weakens it. By providing employers with a workforce that will accept any condition, the undocumented foreign worker class forces concessions on workers in the secondary segment, pushing them toward lower wages, reduced job stability, and fewer protections.

The beneficiaries of this arrangement sit at the top of the economic hierarchy. The privileged primary segment gains from the downward pressure on labour costs and the desperate workforce that undocumented foreigners provide. The marches and protests, viewed through this lens, serve the interests of those at the top by entrenching divisions based on nationality and origin while rendering the foreign population even more vulnerable and exploitable.

The question of whether removing all undocumented foreigners would solve the problem by eliminating the third labour market segment entirely has a clear answer: no. An estimated 178,000 African migrants departed South Africa following recent anti-migrant protests, and some sectors have already felt the impact, particularly textile manufacturing, domestic work, and delivery services. Yet the majority of undocumented foreigners has remained. Many migrants endure extraordinary hardship to stay because returning home means facing extreme poverty, persecution, or war. In many cases, the lack of proper paperwork results from government administrative delays and bureaucratic inefficiencies rather than from migrants’ own actions.

Migrants cannot be protested away. The structural role they fill in the economy is now essential to how South Africa functions. The most viable path forward is to extend legal rights and protections to foreign workers, integrate them into the formal labour market, and enable them to pay taxes and establish businesses that create opportunities for all residents.

Edward demonstrates what becomes possible when the root cause of super-exploitability is removed. He is no longer part of an underclass that pulls South African workers into a race to the bottom. Instead, he contributes to the economy as a participant with rights and dignity. Until this approach becomes policy, the cycle of vulnerability and exploitation will continue to depress wages and conditions for all workers at the bottom of South Africa’s deeply unequal economy, leaving the question of who truly benefits from that cycle uncomfortably open.