The rural linkages of urban households in Durban, South Africa

Abstract

This paper describes the linkages between low-in-come migrant households in Durban and their rural home areas. These relationships can be seen as a continuum, from households which regard their rural homestead as their real home to households who seem to have severed their rural ties. For a number of households, described as "multiple-home households", maintaining both an urban and a rural base provides a safety net in times of economic hardship or political violence. In order to address the needs of these households, housing and rural development subsidy policies should take variations in household size into account and allow greater choice in the allocation of subsidies between urban and rural homes.