While migration in South Africa has been studied on a broad canvas, there have been few accounts of children's migration and the effects on living conditions and wellbeing. This article compares the access to services, housing and household amenities, and family characteristics of children born in the Greater Johannesburg metropolis with those of in-migrant children. The article also examines other indicators of child wellbeing related to parental care and schooling. In-migrant children, particularly children who have lived previously in rural areas and/or have recently migrated into the city, are significantly disadvantaged in comparison to long-term resident children in terms of parental education and occupation, housing type and ownership, access to electricity, refuse removal, water and sanitation. In-migrant children also live in households that are less likely to have amenities such as a refrigerator, television, washing machine, telephone and motor vehicle. In terms of child indicators, in-migrant children enjoy less frequent parental contact and are twice as likely to start school later than resident children. Whilst urbanisation to South Africa's metropolitan centres is generally associated with several widely recognised benefits, for children, these benefits may be tempered by the disadvantages of in-migrant families known to be associated with child wellbeing.

In South Africa, young people's "multiple" or "concurrent" partnerships have been increasingly prominent in public health discourses - as drivers of HIV transmission. Multiple partnerships are typically framed in moralising, negative terms and depicted primarily as male-driven, within a broader framework of women's vulnerability and use of sex for survival and material gain. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with adolescents and young adults in Khayelitsha township near Cape Town, this article investigates young women's partnerships by exploring their complex interpersonal and social dynamics. We unpack women's multiple motivations for, and careful management strategies of, both sexual and social relationships in a broader context of socioeconomic exclusion, threats to health and wellbeing, social obligations and relationships of care. The meanings and practices associated with young people's relationships are more than the sum of individual sexual behaviours, rigid cultural scripts or simply a locus of "risk." The data presented here highlight some of the limitations of "prevention" approaches that do not take into account this nuanced and multilayered view of such relationships. The affective and empathetic dimensions of young peoples' relationships, as well as the socioeconomic contexts in which they occur should also be considered. Without accounting for this context, standard "prevention" approaches are less likely to succeed.