Security Risk and Xenophobia in the Urban Informal Sector
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14426/ahmr.v3i2.830Keywords:
Security risks, Informal sector, Xenophobia, Refugee entrepreneurs, South African entrepreneursAbstract
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.
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