Abstract
The paper discusses precarity as a rallying point for resistance as well as a social condition linked to elite transition in post-apartheid South Africa. Focusing on systemic drivers of poverty, inequality and precarious livelihoods, it discusses the transformation of South Africa’s labour force management and its migratory system from a centralised management of unfree labour by the apartheid state bureaucracy to a post-apartheid state of precarity driven by ‘flexploitation’. The nexus of precarious work and a fracturing citizenship is seen to represent a ‘duality of flexibility’ linking practices of employment and labour control to areas like welfare benefits, citizenship status, political participation and informal livelihoods. This is applicable to migrants and natives alike, but with migrants being particularly ‘flexible’. The author connects the issue of precarity with politics of xenophobia seen as a stratagem for the retaining of a post-apartheid political hegemony in confronting looming labour struggles and an insurgent citizenship of the poor.
Keywords:
sociology; political economy; precarity; migration; social inequality; social movements; racism; South Africa