Feminizing migration patterns and remittances: socio-economic experiences of female migrant street vendors, Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal.

Abstract

Using the African Feminist Theory coupled with Migration theory and the Social Identity Theory and qualitative/phenomenology research design, this study purposively sampled twenty (20) women who are street vendors in Pietermaritzburg KwaZulu-Natal. The study is titled: Feminizing migration patterns and remittances: socio-economic experiences of female migrant’s street vendors, PMB, KwaZulu-Natal. This anthropological study revealed quite a number of research findings; it proved that feminized migration is a dawn that has allowed women to have a financial muscle that they have used to remit back to advance their families, education and health needs of their children and families at large. This study also revealed that migration patterns have allowed women to migrate from different parts of Southern Africa; hence most research participants came from Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Malawi, Mozambique, Ghana, Congo and Botswana. The analysis of the study shows that female street vendors don’t occupy vending stalls. Another pertinent finding of the study is that Pietermaritzburg streets proved to be an informal economic space from which these women have generated money that they own, which has lowered their dependency on their husbands. This study revealed that even women who head households have embarked on migration patterns to provide for their families as they are not married. While street vending has proved to have been an informal economic space for foreign women. The study also revealed that foreign women are vending illegally as they don’t have licenses to trade on the street. Most women indicated that they were occupying rented stalls. This means that some South Africans who had licensed stalls are now generating income from these women, but owners of these stalls are often not around to protect them when evicted by policies because they can’t produce licenses. The study revealed that these female street vendors sell different goods; some sell corrugated iron baths (ubhavu wokugeza kathayela), brooms and bath dishes, fruits and vegetables, airtime, chips and sweets etc. depending on the targeted group of people in that area. This study revealed that their daily earnings between R1050 and R2500 prove that Pietermaritzburg streets are full of economic possibilities. These women can safeguard their vending earnings, which are remitted formally while others are informally remitted. With financial independence, these women had the state of holding sufficient financial gain to fund their surviving expenditure for their entire living without having to work or seek help from their spouses. The study revealed that these remittances play a role in raising the standard of living of those who receive these remittances and assisting the global poverty. Study findings also revealed that Covid-19 restrictions were imposed in South Africa to curb the spread of the Covid-19 virus and decrease the number of fatalities impacted on street vendors. They were not allowed to sell during the stricter levels of lockdown. However, amid such conditions, women remittances played a constitutional part in changing the socio-economic situations of the people left in households, It has allowed them to buy necessities such as food and clothing. Many can now afford to buy sanitary towels for their girl children, which means that the young girls no longer miss school because they now have their monthly supply of sanitary towels. Study contributions and recommendations are discussed in the last chapter of this thesis.