Browsing by Author "Borel-Saladin, Jacqueline"

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    Professionalisation or polarisation? : economic restructuring and changes in Cape Town's labour market
    (2006) Borel-Saladin, Jacqueline; Parnell, Susan; Crankshaw, Owen
    The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the changes that have occurred in the economy of CapeTown, South Africa over the last half of the 20th century and what the possible effects of this change have been on social inequality. Literature on economic restructuring in cities all over the world provided the framework of ideas within which this analysis was conducted. These works focused on how in many cities. progressive deindustrialisation has led to the loss of middle-income jobs, while growth in the service sector has resulted in greater numbers of high- and low-skill and income jobs. Others argued that most cities economies' were becoming increasingly organised around professional, managerial and technical skills only, and that increased polarisation occurred solely in those cities that were subject to large-scale immigration. The overriding question that emerged from this body of work then was whether the occupational distribution of employment in cities was becoming increasingly polarised or professionalised. Careful examination of population census data on sectoral and occupational changes in the economy of Cape Town showed that the city's working population was becoming increasingly professionalised, and not more polarised. Survey data were also used to dispute the contention that a large unskilled migrant population was a sufficient condition for social polarisation. Theories about the impacts of deindustrialisation and the decline in blue-collar work on unskilledethnic urban minority groups were also discussed. Again, using population census data, it wasshown that the Coloured population had dominated manufacturing employment. Therefore, it wasconcluded that the decline in manufacturing employment would most likely have the greatestnegative impact on Coloured employment levels. This would most likely affect Coloured men most though, as Coloured women were gaining more employment in all the other types of occupations that were growing while blue-collar employment, on which men seemed to rely that much more, was declining. The argument was also made that service sector growth, while leading to increased feminisation of the workforce, also causes women to be segregated into low-skill, low-pay service jobs. However, the data for Cape Town concurred with other author's data that showed that the occupational distributions of both women and men are becoming increasingly professionalised. Some authors argued that the decline in manufacturing jobs and growth in low-skill service sector work favours unskilled women over unskilled men, as the manufacturing sector tended to hire more men and the service sector tends to employ more women. This was shown to be true in the case of Cape Town, with African women dominating unskilled labour by 2001.
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    Social polarisation or professionalisation? Another look at theory and evidence
    (2007) Borel-Saladin, Jacqueline; Crankshaw, Owen
    The debate over whether or not the de-industrialisation of cities is accompanied by the occupational and income polarisation of their working populations has been characterised by some confusion over the relationship between incomes and occupations in the service sector. Specifically, many scholars have misunderstood the significance of middle-income service sector occupations for their interpretations of the post-industrial class structure of cities. Through a comparative study of de-industrialisation in Cape Town, we present evidence to show that the growth of service sector employment can, under specific conditions, produce a large middle-income occupational class of clerks, sales and personal services workers. The growth of this class can offset the decline of middle-income jobs caused by the loss of artisans, operatives and drivers in the declining manufacturing sector.
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    Testing the social polarization hypothesis in Johannesburg, South Africa
    (2012) Borel-Saladin, Jacqueline; Crankshaw, Owen
    This study assesses both the social polarisation hypothesis and the role migrants play in this process, using survey and population census data of the Johannesburg region of South Africa from 1970 to 2010. The manufacturing sector, once a major source of urban employment and consisting of a large percentage of skilled and semi-skilled, middle-income jobs has declined while the service sector, argued to consist of predominantly either high-skill, high-pay or low-skill, low-pay jobs, has grown. Thus, the decline of manufacturing and the growth of the service sector are argued to result in a more polarised society. Low-wage, low-skill service sector jobs are also argued to attract poorly-educated, unskilled immigrants unable to compete in the urban labour market for anything other than low-skill, low-pay jobs. Thus, the contention is that immigration contributes to social polarisation.