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This paper aims to examine the role of electronic governance (e-governance) in enabling asylum seekers’ access to public services in the city of Durban, South Africa. Because of COVID-19, the government scaled down its operations, limiting access to public services, including among migrants.

Because of COVID-19-related restrictions, a systematic review was conducted of the relevant academic literature as well as the information portals of relevant government departments, municipalities and research reports on migration and refugees in South Africa. A total of 320 peer-reviewed research articles were identified. These were filtered and 68 relevant articles were selected.

The study found that asylum seekers have limited access to public services via information communication technology-enabled mechanisms. Whilst the city government has embraced e-governance, it is still in its nascent stages.

This study was limited to a desktop one because of COVID-19 restrictions and it focused exclusively on asylum seekers. Therefore, its findings can only be generalised to this category of people.

Future studies on this subject should gather data from all categories of migrants to gain in-depth perspectives.

All spheres of governance in South Africa should recognise asylum seekers as a constituency that deserves access to public services. E-governance can facilitate easier access to these services, and policies need to be aligned with this reality.

This study examined the efficacy of e-governance in enabling access to government services by asylum seekers during COVID-19. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no other study on this subject was conducted during this period.

The purpose of this paper is to break down south-north migration along both the skill and the occupational dimension and thus to distinguish and compare several types of south-north migration and brain drain.

This paper presents south-north migration rates by occupational category at two distinct levels of disaggregation according to International Standard Classification of Occupations 1988 (ISCO-88). The data sets combine information about the labor market outcomes of immigrants in Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries around the year 2000 provided by the Database on Immigrants in OECD Countries by the OECD with employment data for the developing migrant-sending countries from the International Labour Organization.

The incidence of south-north migration was highest among Professionals, one of the two occupational categories generally requiring tertiary education, and among clerks and legislators, senior officials and managers. At the more disaggregated level, physical, mathematical and engineering science (associate) professionals, life science and health (associate) professionals, as well as other (associate) professionals exhibited significantly larger brain drain rates than teaching (associate) professionals. The data also suggest non-negligible occupation-education mismatches due to the imperfect transferability of skills acquired through formal education because south-north migrants with a university degree worked more often in occupational categories requiring less than tertiary education compared to OECD natives. The employment shares of most types of professionals and technicians and associate professionals, as well as of clerks and corporate managers were significantly smaller in the migrant-sending countries compared to the receiving countries.

The constructed data sets constitute the first comprehensive data sets on south-north migration by ISCO-88 major and sub-major occupational category for cross-sections of, respectively, 91 and 17 developing countries of emigration.

This paper aims to investigate migration reasons, traits and entrepreneurial motivation of African immigrant entrepreneurs in Cape Town, South Africa, as there is limited research on immigrant entrepreneurship in South Africa.

The empirical research was conducted under mixed methods paradigm where primary data were gathered from a sample of 93 participants using the convenience sampling technique. Data were gathered through a survey of 72 semi-structured personal interviews and 21 self-administered questionnaires and analysed using SPSS version 21.

The empirical research unveiled that immigrant entrepreneurs migrate into South Africa for different reasons: political instability and economic reasons were the chief reasons for migration. Immigrants engage into necessity entrepreneurship as a need to survive in the host country and to confront discrimination in the job market. Therefore, immigrant entrepreneurs in Cape Town are pushed, rather than pulled, towards entrepreneurship.

This paper also suggests further research that will evaluate education levels of immigrant entrepreneurs in South Africa, as there is a controversy about the education levels of immigrant entrepreneurs.

South Africans need to understand that African foreign entrepreneurs are job creators rather than job takers and to be aware of the skills brought into the country by these entrepreneurs. Accordingly, the current study contributes to peaceful cohabitation between South Africans and African foreign entrepreneurs.

This paper provides an empirical analysis of migration reasons, traits and entrepreneurial motivation of African immigrant entrepreneurs in South Africa and also provides an entrepreneurial migration progression.

The paper presents the results and discusses the implications of a national survey of South African health professionals which found extraordinarily high levels of dissatisfaction with working and living conditions in the country. Emigration potential is very high, and retention strategies have been largely unsuccessful. The survey findings suggest that remedial efforts within South Africa will not slow the brain drain. This has serious negative repercussions for the quality and level of health care available to patients in the country. The only workable retention strategy is for Western countries to stop issuing immigration and work permits to South African health professionals, a policy that would be consistent with their attitude to most other South African workers. However, as long as health professional shortages continue in Western countries and their immigration policy remains divorced from their international development policy, this scenario seems unlikely.

The aim of this paper is to estimate the dynamic of international migration between the different regions of the world for 2030 and to measure the impact of different kind of migration policies on the economic and social evolution.

The change and migration forecasting are estimated for regions of the world using macroeconomic Cambridge Alphametrics Model.

The crisis and its aggravation thus clearly favour scenarios of immigration policy along the “zero migration” or “constant migration”. These choices of migration policies reinforce the deflationary process resulting in reduced opportunities for renewed growth in industrial areas and are not offset by the dynamism of growth in emerging countries. Paradoxically, the developed countries which are most durably affected by the crisis are also those that have ageing population and are in high need of skilled and unskilled labor.

Three options are possible: one going along the depressive process by espousing restrictive immigration policies that remain expensive. The second involves a highly selective immigration policy. Under these conditions the demographic revival already appearing would be reinforced by a rejuvenation of the population brought about by a more open immigration policy. Political and institutional factors play a fundamental role in the emergence of this optimistic assumption and the rise of isolationism in Europe and the ghettoization of suburban areas can hinder the application of such a policy of openness to migration. The third scenario, the mass migration scenario, allows letting go of the growth related constraints and getting out of the deflationist spiral. This pro-active approach could cause public opinions to change in line with public interest. This scenario of mass migration has more of a chance to see the light under a growth hypothesis. However, restrictive policies weaken the prospects of sustainable recovery causing a vicious cycle that can only be broken by pro-active policies or by irresistible shocks.

From specific estimations, four immigration regimes have been built that cut across the major regions of the model: the “core skill replacement migration regime” based on selective policies using migration to fill high-skilled labor needs (United Kingdom, West and Northern Europe, Canada, Australia, and USA), “mass immigration and replacement” applies to South Europe, East Asia High Income, and part of West Asia (Gulf countries), “big fast-growing emerging regions of future mass immigration,” notably China, India and “South-South migration” based on forced migration much of it by climate change, which may likely occur in South Asia, part of West Asia, and, most of Africa (without South Africa). Migrations in transit countries (Central America to USA, and East Europe to UK and West Europe) are based on low skilled migrants in labor-intensive sectors.

The role of international migration, mainly south‐to‐north migration, in economic growth has been well recognised. This paper aims to explore the possibility of reversing the flow of international migration from north to south or from developed countries to developing countries.

The historical development of international migration is reviewed linking the migration with economic development and the possible impact of the reversal in the international migration is analyzed.

The paper argues that reversing the flow of international migration from north to south will increase total net world opportunities through synergic effects, help close the gap between rich and poor countries through sharing the world prosperity and increase the world harmony through the integration of diverse population.

Unlike the main stream scholarly works in the field, this paper views the international migration from a different perspective and discusses the possibility of implementing reverse migration policy as a development strategy in the least‐developed countries.

This paper aims to explore the role of migrants in the process of place making, through case studies of migrant engagement with municipal planning in five South African municipalities.

This study draws on empirical research carried out over two years, using mixed methods research in each municipal case study. Data come from key stakeholder interviews, participant observation, focus groups and demographic data to understand the perceptions and practices of local government officials and migrants within the community.

This research demonstrated that local government officials are assuming a population that is sedentary and geographically bounded, while migration is actively shaping communities. This mobility provides an opportunity for management practices to become more inclusive and effective.

By examining systems of local governance through the lens of a mobile population, new possibilities emerge about the ways migrant participation can contribute to the definitions of a place.

This article presents a study of the social, emotional and physical health lifestyle behaviours of a socially marginalised segment of Canada's population: retired, widowed, immigrant mothers from a South Asian country. Using a narrative research process, we explore how present physical, emotional and social health leisure activities are influenced by behaviours from their childhood, with emphasis on migration to Canada, retirement and widowing as lifestyle behavioural change points. Our sample of immigrant women were living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada during the time of the study. The study employed narrative inquiry, which is often used in migration studies. Our qualitative data analyses uncovered themes that linked present social health activities and early life behaviours and the influence on them of cultural constraints or stimulants. Three forms of sociocultural influences, gender segregation, patriarchal protection and early preparation for marriage, shaped adolescence and adult life as less physically active but more emotionally and socially healthy. Later life events, migration, retirement and widowing, enabled women to gain freedom to renegotiate and reconstruct late‐life styles to be more physically and socially active through ethno‐cultural social networks they had built after migration. The concluding discussion makes recommendations for health and social programme planning to draw attention to cultural realms that could help these women become physically active after migration without compromising traditional social behaviours.