Since 2003, South African policy discourse about persistent poverty has been dominated by the notion that poor people stay poor because they are trapped in a ‘second economy', disconnected from the mainstream ‘first world economy.' This paper considers the adequacy of this notion in the...

This paper describes the findings of case studies-based research on how poor and marginalized people in post-apartheid migrant networks seek to ameliorate poverty and manage their vulnerability. It argues that the ways in which people make decisions regarding formal social grants and cash...

This paper considers the dynamics of informal social protection in the context of chronic poverty and vulnerability in post-apartheid migrant networks. It argues that in poor and marginalized households in South Africa, the indirect impacts of social grants cannot be adequately understood by...

While the informal sector is the ‘forgotten’ sector in many ways, it provides livelihoods, employment and income for about 2.5 million workers and business owners. One in every six South Africans who work, work in the informal sector. Almost half of these work in firms with employees; these...