Problematizing the Foreign Shop

Small businesses owned by international migrants and refugees are
often the target of xenophobic hostility and attack in South Africa.
This report examines the problematization of migrant-owned businesses in
South Africa, and the regulatory efforts aimed at curtailing their
economic activities. In so doing, it sheds light on the complex ways in
which xenophobic fears are generated and manifested in the country’s
social, legal and political orders. Efforts to curb migrant spaza shops
in South Africa have included informal trade agreements at local levels,
fining migrant shops, and legislation that prohibits asylum seekers
from operating businesses in the country. Several of these interventions
have overlooked the content of local by-laws and outed legal
frameworks. The report concludes that when South African township
residents attack migrant spaza shops, they are expressing their
dissatisfaction with their socio-economic conditions to an apprehensive
state and political leadership. In response, governance actors turn on
migrant shops to demonstrate their allegiance to these residents, to
appease South African spaza shopkeepers, and to tacitly blame
socio-economic malaise on perceived foreign forces. Overall, these
actors do not have spaza shops primarily in mind when calling for the
stricter regulation of these businesses. Instead, they are concerned
about the volatile support of their key political constituencies and how
this backing can be undermined or generated by the symbolic gesture of
regulating the foreign shop.