One of the critical challenges facing governments in Southern Africa relates to the regional movement of a large and growing number of legal and undocumented migrants. One of the main issues is that immigration law is a relatively underdeveloped field in Southern Africa and there is no cohesive legal or policy framework in the region. There are attempts to harmonize migration policy in Southern Africa to ensure an easier transition for migrants. 

Another problem is xenophobia, a fear of outsiders, that many migrants experience when displaced to a new region or country. Evidence of xenophobia can be seen in high-profile violent assaults on immigrants by hands of citizens (in which a number of refugees and others have lost their lives). Instead of isolating all migrants as “aliens” and “foreigners” or preaching against xenophobia in the abstract, there needs to be acceptance and promotion of the presence and contribution that non-citizens are, and can, make to the country’s growth and development.

There has also been much research and policy debates on cross-border migration in Southern Africa focused on labour migrants, and hence on men. Women have traditionally been looked at as those 'left behind': as de facto heads of household and bearers of additional burdens of domestic and agricultural work. Over the past decade, although cross-border migration has remained male-dominated, more and more women have been crossing borders between Southern African countries.

New social, spatial and temporal patterns of female migration are evolving, with various forms of cross-border mobility driven by a variety of social and economic motives. In direct and tangible ways, women are the agents by which goods and capital circulate in the region. They are thus potentially powerful agents of development. However, in order to stop perpetuating the male bias in migration flow and the discrimination against women, migration policies and laws must be amended in order that they facilitate rather than hinder women’s mobility.