Table of Contents

List of Contributors; List of Acronyms; Chapter 1: Migrant Entrepreneurship and Informality in South African Cities - Jonathan Crush, Abel Chikanda and Caroline Skinner; Chapter 2: Doing Business with Xenophobia - Jonathan Crush and Sujata Ramachandran; Chapter 3: Making an Area Hot: Interrupting Trade in an Ethnic Enclave in Johannesburg's Inner City - Tanya Zack; Chapter 4: A Transnational Space of Business: The Informal Economy of Ivory Park, Johannesburg - Andrew Charman and Leif Petersen; Chapter 5: Resilience and Innovation: Migrant Spaza Shop Entrepreneurs in Soweto, Johannesburg - Trynos Gumbo; Chapter 6: The Role of Economic Factors and Guanxi Networks in the Success of Chinese Shops in Johannesburg - Lodene Willemse; Chapter 7: On the Move: Cameroonian Migrants in Durban - Akwa Tafuh and Pranitha Maharaj; Chapter 8: Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Cape Town's Informal Economy - Madeleine Northcote and Belinda Dodson; Chapter 9: The Role of Migrant Traders in Local Economies: A Case Study of Somali Spaza Shops in Cape Town - Vanya Gastrow and Roni Amit; Chapter 10: The Role of Networks and Herd Behaviour in the Entrepreneurial Activity and Success of African Migrants in South Africa Robertson K. Tengeh; Chapter 11: The Malayisha Industry and the Transnational Movement of Remittances to Zimbabwe - Vusilizwe Thebe; Chapter 12: Transnational Entrepreneurship and Informal Cross-Border Trade with South Africa - Sally Peberdy, Jonathan Crush, Daniel Tevera, Eugene Campbell, Nomsa Zindela, Ines Raimundo, Thuso Green, Abel Chikanda and Godfrey Tawodzera; Chapter 13: Unpacking National Policy Towards the Urban Informal Economy - Christian M. Rogerson.

About the Author

Jonathan Crush is the professor and CIGI chair in global migration and development, Balsillie school of international affairs, Waterloo, Canada, and honorary professor at the University of Cape Town. Abel Chikanda is the assistant professor of geography and African & African American studies, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, United States. Caroline Skinner is the senior researcher, African centre for cities, and Urban research director for women in informal employment: Globalizing and organizing, Cape Town, South Africa.

Reviews

Mean streets is a refreshingly rich empirical documentation of the economic prospects and possibilities for South Africa of the creativity and entrepreneurship of international migrants. It is mostly a study of missed opportunities for the South African state and government, who prefer to confront immigrants with legal obstacles and regulatory mechanisms than offer them the police, official and social protection they crave to excel as businesses. Revised immigration policies with a human rights focus would harness the energies of immigrants as a resource with benefits for both South Africa and its immigrants' countries of origin. - Francis B. Nyamnjoh, University of Cape Town professor and author of Insiders and Outsiders: Citizenship and xenophobia in contemporary Southern Africa. While migrants subjected to violent attacks generally appear as statistics or pathetic victims, the studies in this book show how many navigate a hostile terrain with considerable ingenuity, and are both victims and active agents in their own lives. The work is both empirically rich and analytically rigorous, making it an important addition to existing literature. - Raymond Suttner, former political prisoner and author of Recovering democracy in South Africa. This hard-hitting volume exposes the shameful, indeed scandalous, harassment of 'foreign' informal entrepreneurs by South African elites and some of the citizens they claim to lead. - Keith Hart, London School of Economics and originator of the term "the informal sector".