Anxious communities: the decline of mine migration in the Eastern Cape

This article addresses the neglected question of what happens to development when migration goes into decline. It examines two villages in the Eastern Cape, South Africa's poorest province and long dependent on mine migration, which is now burdened with returning ex-miners because of retrenchments in the mining industry. It describes the negative effect on ex-migrants' psychological wellbeing and standing in the community, and other effects such as the emergence of women as the new migrants as ex-miners fail to cope in other sectors or to apply mine skills at home; an increase in poverty through loss of wages; lack of money for education; a decline in investment in agriculture; the conversion of farmland to grazing; lack of business development; and dependence on pensions and child welfare grants. The article concludes that although migration did not provide a route out of poverty, its absence is making the poor a lot worse off.