Johannesburg (South Africa) Inner City African Immigrant Traders: Pathways from Poverty?

By deploying various perspectives on urban informality as an analytical lens, this paper explores why African immigrant traders in the Johannesburg (South Africa) inner city have resorted to informal street trading, in the midst of challenges relating to, among others, harassment by regulatory authorities and lack of the necessary trading licences. Using a qualitative study of 40 African immigrant traders, this study suggests as simplistic the explanation that African immigrant traders continue to set up businesses and trade in the Johannesburg inner city, because they were only escaping from, among others, poverty and exploitation. Insights from this study seem to suggest that they also engage in street trading because of the lure of less or no stringent controls and the possibility of earning higher incomes. Such insights seem to complicate the perception by African immigrant traders that they engaged in street trading simply because of discrimination, xenophobia and the devaluing of their qualifications. This raises implications regarding the complexity of reasons why African immigrants in a setting like the Johannesburg inner city engage in street trading.