Migration control, documentation, and state transformation

Examines undocumented migration, one of the main outcomes of the transition from formal labor migration to a mixed system, gauges the long-term impacts of the bureaucratic stasis on governance in South Africa, and explores how an ongoing state of crisis in this policy sphere is shaping the everyday practices of government bureaucracies, including both those charged with specific responsibility for immigration policy and those that have taken up this task. The disjuncture between policy and practice opens the way for opportunism and corruption at lower and local levels of state institutions. Although there is consensus across government that current law and policy are inadequate and require substantial reworking, there is de facto acceptance that government agencies and officials must continue to implement control-oriented policies and practices, including arrests, detentions, and deportations. Reformers of immigration policy need to engage with the grassroots of departments and provide new incentive structures to ensure that new policies are mainstreamed in everyday bureaucratic practice.