Transnational Teacher Migration from South Africa

Globalisation of the world markets has paved the way for the movement of people with scarce skills across national boundaries with relative ease. Professionals have been extremely susceptible, given their particular knowledge and skills base. The trend is for professionals from developing countries to fill the gaps in the labour market in developed countries. As a developing country, South Africa (SA) is losing valuable assets, namely professionals (teachers, doctors, and nurses) to developed countries. Presently there exists a corpus of literature on migration but debates on international South-North labour migration have been one sided, focusing on the consequences for receiving societies (de Haas, 2005:1269). The result of this emphasis is the neglect of an understanding of the causes and consequences of migration in sending countries. Furthermore, there is a distinct dearth of literature on teacher migration in the context of SA despite claims from British education authorities that they are aggressively recruiting SA teachers (Special Assignment, SABC3, 23-04-04, 21h30). This paper highlights transnational migration determinants for South African teachers by presenting the demographic profiles of exiling teachers and their motivations for leaving SA. There appears to be some similarities in this migration to the arrival of indentured Indian Labourers in 1860 in Natal although the latter was a north-south migration. The need to understand migrant teachers’ decision-making is salient as a step in creating avenues for discourse on the production of teachers for export. It will also be of relevance in attracting ex-patriots back to their home country

Developing country · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Globalization · Immigration · Neglect · Political science · Sociology · Education Systems and Policy · International Student and Expatriate Challenges · Law · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology