The Role of Colonialism in Creating and Perpetuating Statelessness in Southern Africa while an additional 47% were at considerable risk of it.1 The report found that 34% of the foreign youth in care had no documentation. In the Limpopo province, near the borders of Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Botswana, 82% had no documents. A further 23% of children held documentation as dependents under the Refugees Act, but many were no longer in contact with the principal applicant, whose presence is required to extend and finalise asylum claims. Under colonial and apartheid rule, only white people were granted citizenship rights. Documentation was used as a means to control populations. Native inhabitants were denationalised and allocated to ‘homelands’ under the poorly-veiled guise that these areas were independent. Native inhabitants were documented and provided with ‘passes’ to control their movement and reduce their rights. At the same time, labour migration played a fundamental role in the apartheid and colonial eras. South Africa’s industrial development was built on labour migrants both from within and from neighbouring countries. South Africans from the ‘homelands’ were recruited to cities, mines, farms, and corporations. Mines could hire an unlimited number of foreign workers.2 Once apartheid was toppled, South Africa attempted to create equal access to socio-economic and citizenship rights for all and sought to reopen its borders and economy. It integrated with SADC and joined the African Union. All classes of migration expanded.3 Many African migrants perceived it as politically and economically stable. Most of the legal regimes for immigration and citizenship created in the two decades post-apartheid were drafted with a commitment to Afrocentric ideals and encompass relatively progressive measures.4 South Africa is the primary regional economic and mixed migration hub. Most migrants come from neighbouring countries. According to the 2011 Statistics South Africa Census, 68% of migrants are from SADC countries and 7% from other African countries. Many are low-skilled and seek temporary work. Currently, they do not have access to legal visa pathways. As such, many enter or stay irregularly. Labour migration has shifted substantially from company-sponsored to mixed. According to the International Organization for Migration5 the proportion of foreign nationals in the mining workforce was estimated at 40% in the 1980s and rose as high as 60% in 2009. Increased restrictions and weakening mining and industrial sectors have caused male contract migration to fall substantially to 23% in Lotte Manicom ‘Foreign children in care: South Africa’ Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town 2019, available at https:// www.scalabrini.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Scalabrini_Centre_Cape_Town_Foreign_Children_in_Care_ Comparative_Report_South_Africa_2019.pdf 2 Jonathan Crush & Clarence Tshitereke ‘Contesting migrancy: The foreign labor debate in post–1994 South Africa’ (2001) 48 Africa Today at 49. 3 International Organization for Migration (IOM) ‘The well-being of economic migrants in South Africa: Health, gender and development’ Working Paper for IOM, World Migration Report (2013), available at www.iom.int/files/ live/sites/ iom/files/What-We-Do/wmr2013/en/Working-Paper_ SouthAfrica.pdf 4 Aimée-Noël Mbiyozo ‘Aligning South Africa’s migration policies with its African vision’ Institute for Security Studies, available at https://issafrica.org/research/policy-brief/aligning-south-africas-migration- policies-with-its-african-vision 5 IOM op cit note 42. 1 85