I recently met Edward behind the counter of a coffee shop in Cape Town. As he prepared my coffee, he told me about the very different life he had since arriving in South Africa from Zimbabwe. His first job was cutting sugar cane for 150 Rand a day. He lost that job because local protesters demanded that his employer hire South Africans instead of foreigners. He then worked as a bar assistant for less than minimum wage before finding another job at a Cape Town coffee shop where he trained as a barista. Soon, however, his employer stopped paying him altogether. Without proper documentation, Edward was afraid to approach the Department of Labour to demand his pay. Unable to pay his rent, he was forced to live in a shack with his wife, newborn child, and teenage son. Today, his papers are in order and he found a decent job that pays enough to sustain his family.

Many foreigners are not as fortunate as Edward. Without proper documentation, they remain vulnerable and highly exploitable as workers. Anti-foreigner protests and violence have driven many foreigners further into the shadows, increasing their vulnerability. However, making foreign workers more vulnerable does not make South African workers more secure. Instead, the marches and protests reinforce structural inequalities in an economy that is responsible for widespread poverty and extreme income inequality.

Two decades ago, I described this phenomenon in my book titled Labor Movement: How Migration Regulates Labor Markets. Although the book was based on research in North America and Europe, I’m amazed how well it can explain the situation related to foreigners in South Africa today.

The book acknowledges that migrants come to richer countries in search of job opportunities. When we change perspective, however, we also find that migrants are essential for the economies of the host countries. In fact, their vulnerabilities and lack of protection – especially due to lacking proper documents – render them highly exploitable, providing a docile and desperate low-wage work force that is reluctant to report any abuse to the authorities.

At the core of this argument rests the idea that labour markets are split. There is a primary segment of the labour market that includes full-time and well-paying jobs that offer benefits and security. Then there is a secondary segment containing jobs that are part-time, temporary, low paying, and insecure. The secondary segment absorbs the cyclical economic shocks and performs the low-end service functions that enable the primary segment to remain high paying and stable and businesses to be profitable, even during a period of prolonged crisis – like in South Africa with years of low economic growth and high inequality.   

A super-exploitable class of foreign workers adds a segment to the bottom of this split labour market. These workers don’t steal jobs from the secondary market. Rather, they add an entirely new segment of workers who cannot claim their rights, are forced to endure abuse, wage theft, and who can be hired and fired at will. Although most undocumented foreign workers do not directly compete with South African workers, the very existence of this third segment diminishes the secondary segment’s bargaining power and forces the workers in the secondary segment into concessions towards lower wages, less job stability, and so on.

It is not hard to imagine that this effect of adding a third segment to the labour market benefits the privileged primary segment. Correspondingly, income inequality in South Africa has been among the highest in the world. 

Seen in this light, we can reinterpret the March and March protests. The people marching are doing the dirty work for the people on top of the economic hierarchy by enshrining divisions based on origin and nationality, and instilling fear in the foreign population that renders them even more vulnerable and exploitable.

Would removing all foreigners without proper papers solve the problem by eradicating the third labour market segment altogether? No, the existence of this third labour market segment has become a structural necessity of the South African economy. The departure of an estimated 178,000 African migrants from South Africa in the wake of recent anti-migrant protests has already affected some sectors of the economy, such as the textile industry, domestic work, and delivery services. 

However, the majority of undocumented foreigners has remained – although the exact numbers are__ difficult to estimate__.  Many migrants will endure enormous hardship to stay in South Africa because the alternative of returning may be extreme poverty, persecution, and war. In many cases, the lack of proper paperwork is manufactured by the government itself through __administrative delays __and bureaucratic inefficiencies. 

The reality is that migrants cannot be protested away.

The most feasible solution is to extend rights to foreigners, protect them from illegality, and include them in the legal labour market, where they pay taxes or open businesses that provide services and create opportunities for all South Africans. Edward is an example of how removing the root cause of his super-exploitability enabled him to obtain decent employment and sustain a family. He is no longer part of an underclass of undocumented workers that drags South Africans into a race to the bottom.

Harald Bauder is a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada and an extraordinary professor at the University of the Western Cape.