Migration Shocks: Integrating Lesotho's Retrenched Migrant Miners

In: International migration review: IMR, Band 45, Heft 4, S. 1017-1042

Abstract

This paper finds that the decline in the numbers of Basotho1 migrant mine workers since the 1990s was not market induced but rather a result of political and policy changes in South Africa. As a result of these changes, household income throughout rural Lesotho dropped significantly. As current migrant households generally do not have skilled workers or operate family businesses, the paper makes a case for training in skills and entrepreneurship as a means of utilizing Lesotho's comparative advantages to generate domestic employment and absorb retrenched and prospective migrant mine workers.