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. The study results clearly show that the pandemic greatly intensified precarity among migrant entrepreneurs working in the informal food sector of the city who faced a myriad of new challenges including closure of businesses, decline in sales and profits, loss of income, loss of access to credit, difficulties in accessing stock, rising stock prices, theft of stock, and mistreatment by officialdom. While local entrepreneurs had the possibility of accessing COVID-19 relief funds, almost none of the migrants in this study had recourse to government support. This increased their vulnerability and reduced their resilience to pandemic disruption.