Informal Pandemic Precarity and Migrant Food Enterprise in South Africa During COVID-19

In focusing on informal pandemic precarity in South Africa, this paper has three main objectives. First, it shows why the South African government’s policy response to COVID-19 increased the precarity of migrant enterprise in the urban informal sector. Second, drawing on data from our survey of informal food sector enterprises in the city of Cape Town in 2021, we investigate how migrant food enterprises differ from one another and assess their relative vulnerability to informal pandemic precarity. And third, we examine the ways in which pandemic precarity affected food enterprises run by migrants from other countries and their prospects for post-COVID recovery.