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South Africa's major cities are periodically wracked by large-scale xenophobic violence directed at migrants and refugees from other countries. Informal sector businesses and their migrant owners and employees are particularly vulnerable targets during these attacks. Migrant-owned businesses are also targeted on a regular basis in smaller-scale looting and destruction of property. There is now a large literature on the characteristics and causes of xenophobic violence and attitudes in South Africa, most of it based on quantitative and qualitative research in the country's major metropolitan areas. One of the consequences of big-city xenophobia has been a search for alternative markets and safer spaces by migrants, including relocating to the country's many smaller urban centres. The question addressed in this paper is whether they are welcomed in these cities and towns or subject to the same kinds of victimization as in large cities. This paper is the first to systematically examine this question by focusing on a group of towns in Limpopo Province and the experiences of migrants in the informal sector there. Through survey evidence and in-depth interviews and focus groups with migrant and South African vendors, the paper demonstrates that xenophobia is also pervasive in these smaller centres, in ways that both echo and differ from that in the large cities. The findings in this paper have broader significance for other countries attempting to deal with the rise of xenophobia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines conflict and cooperation between South Africans and Somali spaza shop owners in townships and informal settlements in the context of post-apartheid structural inequities. I argue that Somali and other poor newcomers suffer the same daily insecurity as the majority of the population. However, with the exception of the concerted killings, lootings and displacement of migrants in 2008–2009, this Somali case shows that contact between newcomers and local people is not always antagonistic and that newcomers are not passive victims of violence, but rather engage successfully in both competition and collaboration to cement their presence in these areas. I conclude that violence against migrants is rooted in South Africa's continuing structural violence and communal crisis, a condition characterised by tensions with compatriots as well as with newcomers. To solve the problem, attention must be paid to the persistence of this structural violence in the post-apartheid political dispensation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]