Gauteng: a province of migrants

Gauteng is a province of migrants and has been the focus of internal and cross border migration within and to South Africa for over a century (Peberdy, 1998, 2009; Crush et al. 1991). It is the province with the highest proportion of migrants in its population (44%) (StatsSA, 2012a: 39). In Census 2011 only 6,678,316 of the 12,272,263 residents counted in the province had been born in Gauteng (StatsSA, 2012).1 It is also the province which experienced the highest rate of growth in population between 2001 and 2011 (30%) of which 52% was a result of in-migration (StatsSA, 2013: 12).

This data brief provides an overview of internal migrants (people who have come to Gauteng from other provinces in South Africa) and cross border migrants (people from other countries) in Gauteng. It encompasses demographics, housing, education, employment and income. It concludes with a brief examination of the attitudes of respondents in the Gauteng City-Region Observatory Quality of Life Survey of 2011 to cross border migrants and migration policy