An enclave entrepôt: The informal migration industry and Johannesburg’s socio-spatial transformation

Abstract

The spatial concentration of production in cities attracts international and domestic labour in ways that change the character and scale of urban space. Drawing on two decades of research on migration and informal trading in Johannesburg, South Africa, this article argues that the global trade in Chinese ‘fast fashion’ interacts with South Africa’s immigration policy, transportation networks, informal trade and established migration infrastructures to transform the city’s Park Station neighbourhood into an enclave entrepôt. Operated and supported by a network of informal logistics services that keep the enclave within but apart from the city, it is exquisitely tailored to cross-border shoppers. At the social and legal margins but at the city’s geographic core, it enables fluidity in an otherwise hostile space; it is at once highly visible and invisibilising. Formed in the shadows of formal institutions and law enforcement, this entrepôt is migrant-driven and serves the needs of people often seeking to remain invisible from the South African state and citizenry. As such, its services are adapted from the infrastructures that service legal and irregular migration in the subcontinent. Unlike ethnic enclaves or neighbourhoods that work as arrival zones, it provides the means to move ‘through’ rather than ‘into’ the city. The entrepôt is a form of migrant space-claiming by vulnerable and mobile people wishing to be in but not of the city. It acts as portal into, through and beyond national territory.

Capital’s Preference for Foreign African Labour in South Africa: Reflections on Liberal Anti-xenophobia Research

“…Thirdly, LHS indirectly condones the neoliberal globalisation project (Palmary 2002;Zack & Landau 2022). Palmary (2002, p. 5) for example denies there is a problem with the number of immigrants and any possibility of competition: '(Mis)perceptions about the amount of migration into South Africa are reinforced by the belief that immigrants are poor and unskilled and will therefore compete with South Africans for scarce public resources such as work, health care etc'.…”

Managing the non-integration of transient migrant workers: Urban strategies of enclavisation and enclosure in Singapore

“…On the flip side, scholars have also considered enclavisation as an organic, bottom-up process reflecting migrants’ strategic choice, as illustrated in writings on the multifaceted experiences of living in ethnically concentrated neighbourhoods (Chimienti and van Liempt, 2015), and work drawing on the site of the enclave to challenge fixed notions of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ (Anderson et al, 2019; Barabantseva, 2016; Shin, 2018). As Zack and Landau (2021: 1) write, the Janus-faced ‘enclave’ lies ‘at the social and legal margins but at the city’s geographic core, it enables fluidity in an otherwise hostile space; it is at once highly visible and invisibilising’.…”

Making cities through migration industries: Introduction to the special issue

“…In the first paper in this section Zack and Landau (2022) examine Johannesburg’s Park Station neighbourhood, which serves as southern Africa’s node in the global trade in Chinese fast fashion. This migrant-driven ‘enclave entrepôt’ has been shaped by an informal migration industry consisting of actors that, in a networked fashion, provide a variety of logistical services for cross-border apparel traders sojourning in the city.…”