On the other hand, exodus refers to fleeing or escaping slavery, persecution or even death. It is a permanent event of mass relocation.
A person or group may intend to migrate to a new location for several reasons. These are typically general in nature and may include employment opportunities, better standard of living , natural resources and much more. The relocation may take place within a country or outside the country.
However, there may be other circumstances that force someone to migrate as well. On the other hand, an exodus is not as casual as the former. Such an event occurs when a large group of people intend to move to a new location in order to avoid a predicament.
The movement is somewhat forced as there are not many options other than absconding. Exodus is often associated with liberation from bondage. Migration is a phenomenon or event when a person, family or group moves from one place to another. The cause for doing so is generally casual. It may include search for better resources, healthcare, job opportunities and even standard of living.
The relocation may be temporary, permanent, depending on the people. People generally migrate voluntarily. However, there are many circumstances that may force a person to move out of their native home. These may include politics, religion and many other social situations. The movement may take place internally within a country, or externally, outside the country. Interestingly, migration also includes exodus. Much of human history has been shaped by migrations of one sort or another.
In ecology, migration refers to the transient movement of individual animals or animal populations, usually due to seasonal variation in food availability and weather conditions.
The most well-known migrant animals are probably migrant birds which are known to travel thousands of miles between their breeding grounds and non-breeding grounds. Because of this, different latitudes receive light of differing intensity which affects how much energy they receive. The seasons are determined by which hemisphere is tilted towards the sun. When the northern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun, it is northern summer. When the northern hemisphere is tilted away from the sun, it is northern winter.
It is the same for the seasons in the southern hemisphere. Because of the changes in food abundance and weather conditions that prevail because of seasons, many animals have evolved the propensity to migrate.
During the winter, animals including birds, Monarch butterflies, and certain mammals, in the northern hemisphere, will migrate south for the winter and return north with the arrival of summer. This seasonal migration seems to have been first noticed by humans as much as 20, years ago, based on Stone Age cave paintings. The earliest Western thinkers, at least, to study animal migration and try to come up with an explanation were the ancient Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle.
Humans move from the land of their birth to different lands for a variety of reasons. Some move voluntarily for economic and educational opportunities, while others are forced to migrate because of being enslaved or imprisoned. In other cases, people might become migrants as a result of needing to flee a war zone.
Different types of migration can be defined as internal and international migration as well as voluntary or involuntary migration. Internal migration refers to human migration within national boundaries. It is not uncommon for individuals or groups to move to different parts of the same country. Within the last century, the most common reason for internal migration has been migration from rural areas to urban areas. This has led to rapid urbanization since the end of World War II.
This is especially true in developing countries. International migration involves movement across international borders. In the past century, more people have moved permanently from their country of birth than ever before in history. Major reasons for migration have included seeking economic and educational opportunities. Many people have moved from the developing world to regions like western Europe and North America in search of a higher standard of living.
Many have also traveled to other countries as international students. Other people have migrated as refugees from war zones or because of environmental deterioration.
One of the largest migrations in recent history has been the Great Atlantic Migration of Europeans to North America which began in the early 19th century as waves of Europeans moved from western Europe and then southern and eastern Europe to the North American continent. Major migrations have happened throughout history. Another important migration is the movement of Indo-Europeans from the steppes of southern Russia and Ukraine into western Europe and India in the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st millennia BC.
Still, another major migration was the movement of the ancestral Polynesians into the east Pacific, beginning around 3, years ago. Human migrations have significantly shaped global human history and culture.
The term Exodus usually refers to a single, rather sudden, departure from a region. According to the Book of Exodus, as well as Numbers and Deuteronomy, the Hebrews escaped from slavery in Egypt and moved out into the desert in large numbers. They are legally in the country but they are certainly not on holiday. The numbers of legal entrants for work and study did increase but remained a small proportion of the total.
The numbers with legal work permits increased from 3, in to 21, in , suggesting that it has become easier to legally employ Zimbabweans in South Africa since the Immigration Act was passed. However, a greater number are almost certainly working without permits.
Table 1. In the United Kingdom, a growing proportion of entrants were returnees coming back after a visit home rising from around 20 percent of entrants in to over 50 percent in Table 1.
This seems counterintuitive since the pressures for migration from Zimbabwe to the UK have only increased.
Rather, it reflects tighter British border and visa controls by a government trying to keep Zimbabweans out, and able, much more effectively than South Africa, to actually do so. The tightening of restrictions on migration to the UK has, of course, had the perverse effect of increasing the migration pressure on neighbouring South Africa and Botswana.
Traditionally, in Southern Africa, outbound migration streams were dominated by young, single, unskilled males. There are almost as many women migrants as men; there are migrants of all ages from young children to the old and infirm; those fleeing hunger and poverty join those fleeing persecution and harassment; they are from all rungs of the occupational and socioeconomic ladder; they are highly-read and illiterate, professionals and paupers, doctors and ditch-diggers.
The most recent national profile of the Zimbabwean migrant worker population was obtained in a representative household survey undertaken by SAMP in The survey confirmed the increase in migration from Zimbabwe after Table 1.
Nearly three-quarters of the sample 72 percent had worked outside the country for 5 years or less and only 10 percent had been working as migrants for over 10 years.
There was no major difference between men and women, suggesting that for the vast majority of both sexes out-migration is a recent experience. In , SAMP found a very similar ratio still pertained 56 percent and 44 percent. Many more migrants were married than unmarried 58 percent versus 31 percent with another 10 percent widowed, separated or divorced Table 1.
Around a third of migrants were sons and daughters in the household, 28 percent were heads of households and another 13 percent were spouses or partners of household heads. All of this suggests a broadening and deepening of participation in migration from Zimbabwe. The majority of migrants were relatively young 72 percent are under the age of 40 and well-educated. Less than 1 percent had no schooling and over 50 percent had a post-secondary diploma, undergraduate degree or post-graduate degree.
Migrants were employed in a wide variety of skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled jobs outside Zimbabwe. In other words, this is a generalized out-movement of people, not confined to one or two professions or sectors.
Twenty percent of migrants were in the informal sector as traders, vendors, hawkers or producers. Also significant were skilled professionals 15 percent , health workers 12 percent , services 9 percent , teachers 7 percent , manual workers 6 percent and office workers 5 percent Table 1. Over 40 percent of professional workers, service workers, managerial office workers and mineworkers were also migrants. Between 30 and 40 percent of office workers and agricultural workers were outside the country.
For teachers, the proportion was 28 percent and for domestic workers 25 percent. Only in the security and military sector and in farming were there significantly more people employed inside the country than out of it. The survey also confirmed that most migrants maintain close connections with Zimbabwe.
Nearly half visit their families at least once every three months. However, almost 20 percent of the migrants mostly living overseas are only able to return home once a year Table 1. Absences from home are highly variable: 18 percent are away for less than a month at a time, 19 percent for between one and six months and 30 percent for between six months and a year. Twenty percent are away for a year or longer. As several of the essays in this collection show, these patterns facilitate the flow of remittances as well as influence the channels preferred by migrants for sending money home.
The developmental role of migrant remittances is central to the current international focus on the relationship between migration, poverty and development. Very little is directed to income-earning, job-creating investment. Finally, remittances increase inequality, encourage import consumption and create dependency.
If remittances were once a potential lever for sustainable livelihoods in Zimbabwe, that threshold has long ago been crossed. The vast majority of Zimbabwean households with a migrant member in the region or abroad regularly receive remittances. Cognizant of this fact, the Mugabe government tried various ruses to ensure that the state got its hands on a greater proportion of the remittance inflow. Without the constant infusion of remittances from abroad, the economic and social collapse of Zimbabwe would have been much faster and even more catastrophic.
Levels of poverty and chronic shortages of the basic necessities of life are such that remittance getting is a survival, not a development, strategy in contemporary Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean population, as has often been mentioned, is unable to feed itself, necessitating large-scale food imports. What is sometimes forgotten is that without remittances of food and cash to purchase food, the hunger and malnutrition situation in Zimbabwe would be even more dire than it has become.
Globally, skilled emigration from almost all developing countries increased substantially in the s. They include output and productivity declines; larger skill premiums that increase inequality; fiscal losses through lost tax revenue; diminished scale economies; loss of role models and spillover knowledge from most-skilled to lesser-skilled individuals; loss of entrepreneurs; and changed comparative advantage.
Tanner, however, asserts that benefits accrue more to large, relatively better-off developing countries that have deliberate labour-export policies, and to elites in these countries:. With the notable exception of Botswana, and more recently South Africa, none have pro-active immigration policies to counteract the ensuing skills crisis.
As the s progressed, and global competition for developing country skills intensified, advanced qualifications became a passport out of the country. In Southern Africa, however, male migration still predominates.
Diminishing alternatives have forced Zimbabwean women from across the full range of age, skills and education levels to engage in various forms of cross-border economic activity, from informal trade to long-term formal employment.
Without reliable, regular data on levels of female migration at earlier dates, it is difficult to accurately assess the extent to which female migration has increased in either absolute or relative terms. An earlier SAMP survey in found that the ratio of male to female migration from Zimbabwe was very similar to that in In other words, in Zimbabwe unlike other countries the majority of male and female migrants are recent migrants.
This suggests that feminization of migration relates more to growing numbers and new roles rather than any sudden post surge in the importance of female versus male migration. Another important aspect of the global migration and development debate concerns the role of diasporas in the development of countries of origin. There has been a growing recognition in destination countries that diaspora individuals, groups and organizations are engaged independently in activities that have developmental aims and outcomes and that these should be encouraged and supported.
Diasporas are themselves increasingly well-organised and lobbying for assistance in these activities. By tapping the diaspora, developing countries aim to encourage remittance flows, investment and technical and scientific knowledge transfer. The oft-cited cases of India and China are particularly important in demonstrating how diasporas can contribute to investment and economic growth in countries of origin. The Zimbabwean diaspora is widely-dispersed, very young and extremely insecure.
Zimbabwean diaspora organizations are increasingly common in countries such as South Africa and the United Kingdom. However, these tend to be of two kinds: politically-focused organizations dedicated to raising consciousness about Zimbabwe or protesting treatment in their countries of destination, and humanitarian groupings and networks dedicated to helping new migrants survive, settle and integrate. Supporting struggling families at home is one thing.
Engagement in any activity that might be deemed supportive of — or co-optable by — Mugabe is not. Zimbabwean migrants within Southern Africa, but also those living outside the region, return home relatively frequently. When away they also maintain very close contact with relatives and kin still in the country.
Transnationalism first emerged as a way of describing and understanding migrant cultural identities and practices. A collection of essays published in by SAMP assessed the utility of the concept of transnationalism to contemporary African immigration to South Africa. None of the essays in that particular collection addressed the situation of Zimbabwean migrants but the thesis is now gaining increasing currency.
In fact, the crisis-driven nature of migration, and the dire situation of many people in the country, probably intensifies connectivity with home. But to what extent are Zimbabweans who have migrated embedded in the society and culture of their destination countries?
The recency of much migration may suggest that it is really too soon to tell. But part of the equation is the reception they receive on arrival. Are destination countries and communities inclusive or exclusionary? The evidence suggests that Zimbabwean migrants as a whole are denigrated, devalued and marginalized especially in South Africa and the United Kingdom. The UN has taken a strong stance on migrant rights through the controversial International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and through efforts to have the Convention ratified in more states.
None of the states to which Zimbabweans prefer to migrate has ratified the Convention. Their rights are seriously circumscribed in many states, including South Africa and the United Kingdom.
The global media has ensured that no one can be unaware of the trials and tribulations of ordinary Zimbabweans under the Mugabe regime. Yet this has not translated into a great deal of sympathy for those Zimbabweans who have left the country.
The world, it seems, would prefer that Zimbabweans stay home and suffer. Perhaps the most outrageous example of hostility occurred in South Africa in May , when scores of Zimbabweans, along with migrants from other African countries, were hounded out of their homes and communities by rampaging mobs. Zimbabweans worldwide have found it extremely difficult to access refugee protection systems. In many countries where they either live beyond the margins of legality or even within them, labour market discrimination finds them struggling to make ends meet.
The first two chapters in this volume provide important context for the contributions that follow. The initial chapter by historian Alois Mlambo surveys the history of migration to and from Zimbabwe before The current debate about migration and development is notable for its superficial approach to the history of this relationship and blindness to longstanding arguments about the meaning of development.
Indeed, it would be fair to say that the history of cross-border migration in Southern Africa was one of the major pre-occupations of progressive researchers in the s and s. This is not simply a matter of acknowledging that migration has a history but also of understanding the relevance of this history in the present. The relationship between migration and development, for example, is not a new debate in Southern Africa.
In one way or another, it has been a constant preoccupation of colonial and postcolonial states. Mlambo shows that, for most of its history, Zimbabwe was primarily a destination for migrants.
Prior to the nineteenth century, the Zimbabwe Plateau was peopled by migrants from the north. In the early eighteenth century, there was a wave of migrants from the south fleeing the political and economic upheavals of Zulu expansionism.
In the twentieth century, following colonial conquest and extensive land expropriation, white settlers entered the country in considerable numbers. Their numbers peaked at , in but would have been even larger, says Mlambo, but for a restrictive immigration selection policy that welcomed whites from the UK and discouraged those from elsewhere.
The contemporary migration and development debate has recently discovered circular migration as if it were a new phenomenon. However, it has been the dominant form of migration in Southern Africa for many decades. Unable to secure enough labour for their farms, plantations and mines, white settlers imported unskilled black migrants from neighbouring Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. In a region well-known for the temporary nature of unskilled migration, these migrants often stayed in Zimbabwe and eventually cut their links with home.
Zimbabwe experienced other types of in-migration as well. Later it was a haven for political refugees from South Africa and Mozambique. However, as Mlambo shows, people have always found reasons to leave Zimbabwe. During the period of colonial and settler rule, almost as many settlers left as came.
Between and , for example, the country received a total of , white immigrants but lost , around two-thirds through emigration. Between and , more whites left than arrived , versus , At independence, whites who feared the loss of racial power and privilege relocated to apartheid South Africa or left the region altogether.
Their numbers dropped by two-thirds in the first decade of independence and were down to less than 50, when the farm seizures began at the turn of the century.
Some black Zimbabweans worked on settler farms and mines often migrating within the country to do so but throughout the twentieth century many crossed into South Africa to work, where, despite the humiliations of apartheid, wages were generally higher.
Political reasons for leaving Zimbabwe also pre-date the s. In the s, for example, many black Zimbabweans opposed to the Smith regime went into exile but returned again after independence.
Apart from historical amnesia, another major omission in the migration and development debate is any systematic consideration of internal migration and its relationship with international migration. In a volume devoted almost exclusively to international migration from Zimbabwe, it is therefore important to understand what was happening to internal migration during this period and to identify any parallels and connections with out-migration from the country. In her chapter, Deborah Potts provides an overview and analysis of internal migration trends from to the present.
During the period of white settler control, many Zimbabweans were forcibly displaced from their lands to make way for white settlement. In the s, as the independence war escalated, these restrictions broke down and migration to urban areas increased significantly. The s are earmarked by Potts as a decade of normality in the sense that postcolonial internal migration in Zimbabwe resembled that of most other African states after independence.
Freed of controls on their mobility, rural dwellers headed for new economic opportunity in the towns. Urbanization outpaced the delivery of employment opportunities and an informal sector took root. Most migrants felt insecure about a long-term future in the urban areas and retained close connections with their rural homes.
While the departure of disaffected whites accelerated, that of blacks came to a virtual halt. In , Mugabe recalled all Zimbabwean mineworkers in South Africa and banned any further recruiting. South Africa in the s was also in the violent death throes of apartheid and was not an appealing prospect for migrants. Two smaller towns that did continue to experience rapid growth were Mutare and Beit Bridge.
Both are border towns whose growth was a function of increasing cross-border movement and informal trade with Mozambique and South Africa respectively. None had net in-migration from internal sources, and the population of every province was growing at a rate less than the natural increase due to emigration.
Potts, like other commentators, attributes decelerating urbanization and growing emigration to the devastating economic impact of World Bank-led Structural Adjustment. The data is not yet available to show what has happened to internal migration at the national scale since The expropriation of white-owned farms forced a significant net out-migration of farmworkers, many of whom were the descendents of migrants from other countries.
Those sceptical of the developmental value of migration often point to the crippling impact of skills migration from developing to developed countries. Tevera and Crush lay out two contrasting positions on brain drain causality. In other words, there would be no brain drain if conditions at home were more conducive for skilled people to stay. A common approach to the brain drain is the compilation of large macro-scale data sets of migrant flows from which to make inferences about causality and impacts.
To understand the actual migration behaviour of skilled people and the impact of migration on those who remain, such analyses obviously need to be supplemented with interview-based studies of the attitudes, perceptions and actions of actual and potential migrants. The problem here is that many studies rely on such small samples that it is hard to know how representative the opinions gleaned actually are. The surveys discussed by Tevera and Crush are not strictly comparable since the two sample populations differ and were taken some years apart.
For example, levels of discontent were notably higher amongst the student body but we cannot conclude that the students were necessarily more dissatisfied than working professionals at the time. In all likelihood, the dissatisfaction levels of those working in Zimbabwe increased considerably in the years following the survey. If that is indeed the case, then the findings from related though not identical samples become instead a commentary on how much worse conditions became between and The two surveys revealed extreme dissatisfaction amongst the skilled residents actual and in training with a wide variety of economic and social conditions in the country.
On virtually every indicator, a majority said that they were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. Moreover, most also felt that the situation would get worse or much worse in the ensuing five years. Comparing conditions in Zimbabwe with those in their most likely destination of emigration, their home country scored worse on every social and economic measure.
These findings are extremely sobering for they are significantly more negative than those for the other countries surveyed in SADC, including South Africa which also has a major brain drain to contend with. Tevera and Crush also examine the relationship between negative attitudes and emigration intentions. Some 57 percent of the skilled professionals and 71 percent of the students had given emigration a great deal of consideration.
Sixty seven percent of the professionals said it was likely or very likely they would emigrate within five years. Seventy percent of the students said they would leave within two.
The magnitude and impact of the medical brain drain from Zimbabwe has garnered much attention in the literature. The debate is an uncomfortable one. Most would do the same in their position. Yet, at the same time, the healthcare situation for the mass of the population becomes more dire with each one who leaves their post. They found a ready market for their skills overseas, especially in the UK, and began to leave in increasing numbers. The number of Zimbabwean health professionals registered in the UK increased from 76 in to 2, in Of these, over 80 percent were nurses.
Nurses came formally through private recruiters and under their own steam. In , only 56 percent of nursing staff requirements in the Zimbabwean public health system were filled. At that time, the primary reason was movement out of the public into the private system a career move often accompanied by internal migration. The number of nurses employed in the public sector fell by 19 percent between and , while the public sector share of nurses fell from 58 to 45 percent in even less time Internal migration from public to private, and from rural hospitals to towns, where most private practices are located was often a prelude to international migration.
The migration attitudes of in-country nursing professionals revealed in the survey showed enormous dissatisfaction with working conditions. His survey of nurses found that as many as two-thirds were considering a move to the private sector and that 71 percent were considering leaving the country.
The most likely destination was the UK 30 percent , while 24 percent preferred destinations within Africa mostly South Africa followed by Botswana. The extent of dissatisfaction in the public health sector was massive, a finding replicated in SAMP surveys.
In Zimbabwe, this has never really been an option. Working conditions were so poor and continued to deteriorate. Even the most active global recruiting campaign would have had little success. In the medical sector there is no such thing as a general impact of migration. The results are felt immediately by patients and by those workers who have not yet left. When nurses leave the public health system for the private sector or for other countries, it is not only the patients who suffer but the nurses who remain.
Chikanda shows how this has produced a vicious circle in Zimbabwe. Nurses leave the country. Those who remain work longer hours, carry heavier patient loads and, particularly in rural areas, are forced into multiple roles for which they have no formal training.
Conditions become so taxing and morale so low that they too leave. Despite the increasingly global spread of the Zimbabwean diaspora, migrants congregate in certain countries and in certain places within those countries. Zimbabwean migrants there tend to be middle-class, educated professionals. The historical linkages between Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom have made this an obvious channel for skilled migrants leaving the country. The result, as Bloch points out, is that the Zimbabwean population of the UK is considerably less diverse socially and economically than that in South Africa.
Over 80 percent had jobs but almost half said they had skills and experience which were not being used in their jobs in the UK. Many were forced into the lower levels of the UK labour market.
Eighty percent remit money to Zimbabwe and 19 percent elsewhere, indicating an active global diaspora network. Forty percent remit at least once a month with the amount remitted strongly correlated with income.
Family livelihood needs are the main reason for remitting, though 12 percent remitted for the main purpose of buying land or property or investing in business. Zimbabweans in the UK have strong social ties, and migrant networks provide advice about moving, accommodation and help in obtaining visas. Interest in return migration is strong, with 72 percent definitely wanting to return home.
Only six percent definitely did not want to return to Zimbabwe in the future. Having a spouse or partner or children in Zimbabwe was a key factor influencing the desire to return. The longer people had been in the UK, and the more secure their immigration status, the lower the desire to return to Zimbabwe.
The minority who definitely did not want to return to Zimbabwe emphasized the political and economic situation and the uncertain future. Bloch also explores whether there is any interest in participating in development activities in Zimbabwe. Only six percent said they were definitely not interested.
In her survey, nearly 20 percent of migrants were working as carers or care assistants. Drawing on her interviews with those working in the sector, McGregor examines the role and experience of an exploited and extremely dissatisfied group of Zimbabwean migrants. The privatisation and outcontracting of local authority residential and home care services has worsened conditions of employment in parts of the labour market, making care jobs increasingly unattractive to native workers.
Most Zimbabwean carers had little or no experience in care work prior to arriving in the UK, partly because the majority have skills or training or experience in other professions and partly because there is no care industry as such in Zimbabwe where care is the responsibility of the family. Zimbabwean carers prefer working for clients who are more independent rather than in nursing and dementia homes.
Many work for agencies supplying temporary staff to residential homes. Most were unhappy with their social life in Britain, as anti-social hours allowed them little time with family and friends. At work, friction with the permanent staff is exacerbated by the fact that the temporary staff are African or other migrants, compared to a predominantly white permanent staff.
Racist attitudes and verbal abuse from clients is also not uncommon. In addition to the racism from clients and permanent staff, the male carers complained of gender discrimination at work. At the same time, many men felt that their masculinity was challenged by jobs that were beneath them.
The different responses to care work by male and female migrants, in a sector in which neither would work voluntarily, shows that the Zimbabwean diaspora experience is profoundly gendered.
This theme is taken up in the chapter by Dominic Pasura who shows how gender roles, norms and expectations in Zimbabwe have been challenged and reconfigured once migrants arrive in the UK. In the private spaces of the household, Pasura argues, gender roles and expectations brought from Zimbabwe have come under pressure, leading to intense domestic conflict and the break-up and dissolution of many marriages.
The primary reason is that in the UK women have become the primary income earners in many households. Most of the women claimed to have control over how they used their salaries, unlike in Zimbabwe.
Quite apart from their new role as primary breadwinners and the financial independence this has brought, the diasporic context has led women to question basic assumptions about traditional gender roles and relations and to carve out new gendered identities.
They are able to do this more successfully in Britain than in Zimbabwe, where extended families and kinship ties are central to the production and reproduction of gendered ideologies. Marriage in Zimbabwe is primarily a contract between two families. In the diaspora context, divorced from its social and cultural context, the contract often does not hold up. Other forms of relationship are taking its place. The dissolution of conventional marriage partnerships, the invention of new forms and the reconfigured gender relationships that accompany both, do not go uncontested, particularly in the public spaces of churches and public houses.
Churches are attended more by women than men, yet the church leaders are generally male and propagate an ideology of male authority and female subservience more in keeping with the pre-migration situation in Zimbabwe. Pubs and gochi-gochi a Shona word for barbecue, where friends get together, roast meat and drink beer are also male domains where men reassert their crumbling masculinity.
Men, not surprisingly, see the regendering of domestic roles as a temporary phase which will come to an end with their eventual return to Zimbabwe. In contrast to the skilled and highly educated profile of the Zimbabwean migrant cohort in the United Kingdom, that in South Africa is far more diverse, drawn from virtually all social and economic strata of Zimbabwean society. Historically, both Johannesburg and the farms of northern South Africa are established destinations for Zimbabwean migrants.
However, as migration from Zimbabwe has become more generalized, so the profile of migrants in both sites has diversified and become more complex. Based on recent sample survey research, Daniel Makina and Blair Rutherford construct a picture of the migrant population in both centres.
There are certainly differences between the two groups of migrants in Johannesburg and on the farms but these are not as significant as one might think, a direct result of the desperate situation of many in Zimbabwe and their willingness to accept employment wherever they can find it. Johannesburg is the main destination for migrants from Zimbabwe and also has the most diverse Zimbabwean population.
Harrowing scenes of desperate Zimbabweans camped in and around the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg have come to symbolize the sorry plight of the most vulnerable migrants. But these groups, though increasingly common, are far from typical of the Zimbabwean population of Johannesburg. In , Makina undertook a survey of over 4, Zimbabwean migrants in inner-city Johannesburg which showed how diverse the migrant population is, even within three high-density inner-city suburbs.
The most striking finding was how quickly the influx of Zimbabweans into the city gathered pace after Only 8 percent of the migrants had arrived in the city before Between and , the average annual growth rate for new arrivals was 34 percent.
Zimbabwean migrants in Johannesburg hail from all parts of Zimbabwe. However, the majority 70 percent are from the southern provinces. In other words, there is significant urban-urban migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa. While a third of the migrants who arrived in Johannesburg in the s were female, the overall proportion of women climbed to 41 percent by Labour migration to South Africa was once the preserve of the single, unmarried young adults of the Zimbabwean household.
This group constituted only 36 percent of Zimbabwean migrants in Johannesburg. In many Zimbabwean households, anyone who can work is now a candidate for migration whatever their age or marital status. They work in a wide variety of jobs and have very low rates of unemployment.
Yet there is considerable deskilling with many people being over-qualified for the jobs they do. Nor are they well paid, with only 20 percent earning more than R4, a month. Despite this, 90 percent remit regularly to Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwean farmworkers in northern South Africa earn a pittance by comparison with most migrants in Johannesburg. The legal minimum wage on the farms was R a month in The farmworkers earned an average R a month with 35 percent earning less than R a month. Nevertheless, these migrants too, were regular remitters of money and goods to Zimbabwe.
In Johannesburg, Zimbabweans work in a multitude of occupations. In the farming zone, there is only one occupation, though a variety of farm tasks. Like migrants in Johannesburg, many working on the farms have prior employment experience in Zimbabwe.
Two-thirds of the farmworkers had been employed at home, though only one in ten had prior farm experience. They were employed in a wide variety of occupations, including office work, retail, domestic work, and teaching. Rutherford compares his results with those of an earlier SAMP survey in the same area to examine how the crisis in Zimbabwe has reshaped the character of migration to the farms of South Africa. One major change is where migrants come from in Zimbabwe.
Most farmworkers who have been crossing the border to work on the farms in small numbers since the mid-twentieth century used to come from communities just across the border, primarily as seasonal workers. While the majority are still from the south of Zimbabwe, there are now farmworkers in the border zone from many other parts of the country, including Harare.
Other changes identified by Rutherford include a reduction in the numbers of young migrants and a dramatic increase in those over the age of 30, a marked increase in married migrants of both sexes and a more educated workforce a common complaint of Zimbabwean workers now is that they are too educated and skilled for farm work.
With labour in abundance and no chance of employment at home, workers are tending to stay on the same farm and build patronage relations with farmers. In , the proportion of migrant farmworkers who had entered South Africa without documentation was over 90 percent. This made them very vulnerable to arrest and deportation when they were off the farm, or when the police raided the farms often just before payday with the connivance of farmers.
More recently, the legal status of farm-workers has, somewhat inadvertently, improved. For the first decade of ANC rule, the South African government pursued a relentless rights-disregarding campaign of arrest and deportation of migrants from neighbouring states, under powers inherited from the apartheid government.
Those draconian powers were meant to be softened somewhat by the Immigration Act of but deportations and rights abuses by agents of the state continued in defiance of the law and the Constitution. Between and , over 2 million people were detained and forcibly removed from South Africa in a policy widely regarded as a complete and extremely expensive failure.
The numbers would have been even higher but for the well-known propensity of the police to accept bribes in exchange for not arresting migrants or tearing up their documentation. Zimbabweans have increasingly born the brunt of deportations. In , Zimbabwean deportations exceeded those of Mozambicans for the first time and have since risen to over , per annum. The policy shift should spell relief for migrant farmworkers who have been preyed on mercilessly by the police in Limpopo Province for many years.
Farmers have been applying for, and been granted, corporate work permits under the Act to hire a specified number of foreign workers. Unfortunately, legal status has not made much difference to the working and living conditions of the average Zimbabwean migrant farmworker.
SAMP has consistently tried to understand migration in terms both of its general macro-level characteristics and trends and as experienced through the eyes of migrants themselves.
This volume therefore discusses the results of large-scale, statistically representative national household surveys and provides examples of how migration is experienced, talked about and interpreted by individual migrants.
One of the major shifts in migration over the last two decades is growing female cross-border migration. In the case of Zimbabwe, this process has been accelerated by the economic collapse of the country. Initially, in the s, the majority of female Zimbabwean migrants worked in informal cross-border trade. In the last decade, this has changed dramatically, as unemployed women have looked to use their formal sector skills and experience in South Africa.
The chapter in this volume by Kate Lefko-Everett examines this shift from the perspective of the women themselves. The women are extremely direct and frank about the factors encouraging migration from Zimbabwe. They are in South Africa out of necessity, not because they find it a pleasant place to be.
While the xenophobic violence of May was directed at foreign migrants in general, many Zimbabweans were caught up in the firestorm — at least five of those who were killed were Zimbabwean.
There is a clear preference for legal border crossing, not least because it is much safer. At the same time, many women are forced into irregular channels by costs and the restrictive visa regime between South Africa and Zimbabwe. Once in those channels they face almost certain physical hardship, exploitation and, in many cases, sexual assault. The interaction between border-crossing and sexual violence in South Africa is a shameful by-product of draconian, but ultimately pointless and ineffective border controls in Southern Africa.
Do borders serve any function other than the sexual and material gratification of those, including male agents of the state, who prey on disempowered migrant women? In the eyes of the state, borders are there to clearly demarcate the territorial limits of the nation-state and its differentiation from its neighbours. Zimbabwe, however, has six neighbours and thousands of kilometres of unguarded and unpatrolled borders. The challenge to the state comes when the borders are ineffective physical barriers, when people have reasons for crossing them and when the state cannot prevent them from doing so by force or deterrent.
As Pophiwa points out, large-scale informal trading under the noses of the authorities took off in the s along the border with Mozambique and exploded with the economic meltdown in Zimbabwe. The trade is simply too important to households that have few other means of economic survival.
This border is considerably less dangerous for border-crossers than others such as the South Africa-Zimbabwe boundary. This is because, in the study area at least, the border cuts communities of similar culture and language in two.
Local cross-border movement to visit friends and relatives has been going on for many years. Everyone knows about the paths across the border and can guide those who come from outside the district, adding to their income.
The next three chapters in the volume examine the central question of how households have managed to survive in a country that is in total economic disarray. As argued earlier, remittances from those who do leave are the key to unlocking why more people do not flee collapsing states and how households keep going in intolerable circumstances.
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