Ethiopia-South Africa

Research practice

One of the first things we are doing in the Ethiopia-South Africa corridor is to try to understand how migrants currently use digital technologies, and so together with our colleague Faisal Garba and his team at UCT, we have created a short survey for migrants in South Africa, as well as returned migrants and their families to complete (this takes less than 15 minutes).  This was launched on 6th May 2020.  Please do share the link widely amongst migrants in South Africa.

Our interventions

Our work package is explicitly an “intervention package” that builds on our research alongside that of our colleagues across the MIDEQ Hub.  In essence, we aim to facilitate and work with migrants and tech developers to create digital interventions that will help to reduce the inequalities associated with migration.  Part of our work in South Africa has been to train and support migrants to produce short videos that share information about their lives that they hope will thereby reduce inequalities.  These are collected here in three groups:

• Wise, safe and secure use of digital technologies
• Important issues facing migrants
• Lifestyle and entrepreneurial matters

Resources

As part of our research, and in the interests of disseminating this as widely as possible, we are compiling a database of publications on the use of digital technologies by migrants, focusing particularly on South-South migration. This page provides a short introduction to this body of literature as it relates to our Ethiopia-South Africa corridor, by featuring some of the most interesting work in the field. Not all of these publications explicitly address the use of digital technologies by migrants in this corridor, but they do provide valuable insights that have framed our understanding of the issues.  Inclusion in this listing does not, though, indicate that we or other members of the Hub agree with the arguments contained therein.

• Amel, B.Y. (2012) The Ethiopian Clubs: The Development of Social Institutions and Identities amongst Ethiopians in Johannesburg. MA thesis, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa.
• Estifanos, Y. (2015) The political economy of transnational social networks and migration risks: the case of irregular migrants from southern Ethiopia to South Africa. MA Thesis, University of Oldenburg, Germany
• Estifanos, Y.S. and Zack, T. (2019) Follow the money: tactics, dependencies and shifting relations in migration financing on the Ethiopian-South African migration corridor, Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium, University of Sussex, Working Paper 63.
• Gebre, L.T. (2010) The experiences of immigrants in South Africa: a case study of Ethiopians in Durban. Durban: South Africa.
• IOM (2009) In Pursuit of the Southern Dream: Victims of Necessity: Assessment of the irregular movement of men from East Africa and the Horn to South Africa. Geneva: International Organization for Migration.
• Kanko, T., Bailey, A. and Teller, C. (2013) Irregular migration: causes and consequences of young adult migration from Southern Ethiopia to South Africa. The XX-VII International Population Conference, 26–31 August, 2013 Busan, South Korea.
• Le Roux, H. (2014) The Ethiopian Quarter, in: P. Harrison, G. Gotz, A. Todes, and C. Wray (eds) Changing Space, Changing City: Johannesburg after Apartheid,
  Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 498–505.
• Lewis, M (photographs) and Zack, T. (words) (2017) Johannesburg.  Made in China, Johannesburg: Fourthwall Books (Book 9/10, Wake up, this is Joburg, a ten book series of Johannesburg stories).
• Nyamnjoh, F. and Brudvig, I. (eds) (2016) Mobilities, ICTs and Marginality in Africa: Comparative Perspectives, Cape Town: HSRC Press.
• Zack, T. and Estefanos, Y.S. (2016) Somewhere else: social connection and dislocation of Ethiopian migrants in Johannesburg, African and Black Diaspora: an International Journal, 9(2), 149-165.
• Zack, T and Govender, T. (2019) Architecture of visibility and invisibility: a reflection on the secret affinities of Johannesburg’s cross-border shopping hub, Anthropology of Southern Africa, 42(1), 29-15.
• Zack, T. and Landay, L.B. (2021) An enclave entrepôt: the informal migration industry and Johannesburg;s socio-spatial transformation, Urban Studies, https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980211012632.

For a more general bibliography on technology, inequality and migration do visit our main page on Resources on migrants and digital technologies.

Latest update 2nd August 2021