In search of South Africa’s ‘second economy’: Chronic poverty, economic marginalisation and adverse incorporation in Mt Frere and Khayelitsha

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authordu Toit, Andries
dc.contributor.authorNeves, David
dc.date.accessioned2019-03-11T07:36:37Z
dc.date.available2019-03-11T07:36:37Z
dc.date.issued2007-11
dc.description.abstractSince 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 light of research conducted in 2002 and 2005/06 in Mount Frere in the rural Eastern Cape, and in Cape Town’s African suburbs. It argues that a process of simultaneous monetisation, de-agrarianisation and de-industrialisation has created a heavy reliance on a formal sector in which employment is becoming increasingly elusive and fragile. Fieldwork suggested high levels of economic integration, corporate penetration and monetisation, even in the remote rural Eastern Cape. Rather than being structurally disconnected from the ‘formal economy’, formal and informal, ‘mainstream’ and marginal activities are often thoroughly interdependent, supplementing or subsidising one another in complex ways. The dynamics involved diverge significantly from those imagined both in ‘second economy’ discourse and in small, medium and micro enterprise (SMME) policy. Instead of imagining a separate economic realm, ‘structurally disconnected’ from the ‘first economy,’ it is more helpful to grasp that the South African economy is both unitary and heterogeneous, and that people’s prospects are determined by the specific ways in which their activities are caught up in the complex networks and circuits of social and economic power. Rather than ‘bringing people into’ the mainstream economy, policy-makers would do better to strengthen existing measures to reduce vulnerability, to consider ways of counteracting disadvantageous power relations within which people are caught, and to support the livelihood strategies that are found at the margins of the formal economy.en_US
dc.identifier.citationdu Toit, A., Neves, D. (2007). ‘In search of South Africa’s ‘second economy’: Chronic poverty, economic marginalisation and adverse incorporation in Mt Frere and Khayelitsha’, Working Paper 1. PLAAS, UWC, Cape Town.en_US
dc.identifier.isbn978-1-906433-01
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10566/4450
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherInstitute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Capeen_US
dc.relation.ispartofseriesWorking Paper;1
dc.subjectEastern Capeen_US
dc.subjectSecond economyen_US
dc.subjectGlobalisationen_US
dc.subjectSocial exclusionen_US
dc.subjectAdverse incorporationen_US
dc.titleIn search of South Africa’s ‘second economy’: Chronic poverty, economic marginalisation and adverse incorporation in Mt Frere and Khayelitshaen_US
dc.typeWorking Paperen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
wp_1_search_south_africa_s_second_economy_poverty_marginalisation_incorporation_2007.pdf
Size:
651.88 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
license.txt
Size:
1.71 KB
Format:
Item-specific license agreed upon to submission
Description:
Download

Collections

Working Papers