The Role of Interpersonal Communication in Re-identity of Voluntary Economic Migrants Living in South Africa

Abstract

This chapter highlights the growth of voluntary movement of labour force through globalisations and resultant pressure on economies to compete with one another. In this global economic environment, demand to acquire access to those individuals with critical professional skills has grown, thus opening up opportunities for individuals to move to recruiting countries and employer organisations across the globe. This has been evidenced by the exponential rise of degreed migrants in comparison to low-skilled migrants. These voluntary economic migrants, are individuals with some university education, with special professional skills who choose to move to a destination country for professional opportunities. Adapting to a new social context or setting involves overcoming social representation barriers arising from acculturation schismogenesis and the discussion highlights the similarities of such individuals to other migrants. The challenge for individual migrants is in working to reconstruct their identities in their transnational context to build themselves a new social reality through stabilising schism arising from their transnational social representations meeting. Eleven voluntary economic migrants’ interpersonal online and offline communication was analysed using three sets of data and arranged into themes related to their process of re-identity. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the implications of such skilled individuals being unable to reconstruct and stabilise their identity in their new context on recruiting countries, namely financial cost and loss of critical skills.