Ambivalent Mobilities: Zimbabwean Commerical Farmers in Mozambique

TY - JOUR

T1 - Ambivalent Mobilities: Zimbabwean Commerical Farmers in Mozambique

AU - Hammar, Amanda Julie

N1 - Part of Special Issue: 'The Zimbabwe Crisis Thrugh the Lens of Displacement'

PY - 2010/6

Y1 - 2010/6

N2 - One of the effects of the crisis in Zimbabwe since 2000 has been both the direct and indirect internal displacement of farmers, farm workers and innumerable others for both political and economic reasons, as well as the movement of millions of Zimbabweans across borders into neighbouring countries and further afield. Among some of the reluctant cross-border migrants in the region is a relatively small number (around 80 families) of mostly white Zimbabwean former large-scale commercial farmers who moved into Manica Province in central-west Mozambique in the early 2000s, with the promise and hope of generating an agricultural boom. Ongoing research underpinning this article is concerned with the often contradictory perceptions, experiences and effects of these displacees' migration across Zimbabwe's eastern border. This considers not only the farmers' own lives and livelihoods, but also their relationships to and impacts upon the multi-layered 'host' environments into which they have inserted themselves. As such, 'ambivalent mobilities' refers not only to the ambivalences of the farmer-migrants themselves - both those who have stayed in Manica and those who have left - but also to the ambivalences towards them amongst different actors in the various sites to which they have relocated. The study is intended to explore how a specific if internally diverse group of displaced Zimbabweans are reconfiguring their lives outside Zimbabwe (although not entirely separate from it), and to examine what role these particular migrations are playing in the re-shaping of both material and moral economies in different places and at different scales. At another level, the study is concerned with the paradoxes of dislocation and relocation that occur simultaneously on several levels, and the repositionings (material and symbolic, forced and chosen) this generates amongst displaced subjects in their relationships to themselves and to other people and places.

AB - One of the effects of the crisis in Zimbabwe since 2000 has been both the direct and indirect internal displacement of farmers, farm workers and innumerable others for both political and economic reasons, as well as the movement of millions of Zimbabweans across borders into neighbouring countries and further afield. Among some of the reluctant cross-border migrants in the region is a relatively small number (around 80 families) of mostly white Zimbabwean former large-scale commercial farmers who moved into Manica Province in central-west Mozambique in the early 2000s, with the promise and hope of generating an agricultural boom. Ongoing research underpinning this article is concerned with the often contradictory perceptions, experiences and effects of these displacees' migration across Zimbabwe's eastern border. This considers not only the farmers' own lives and livelihoods, but also their relationships to and impacts upon the multi-layered 'host' environments into which they have inserted themselves. As such, 'ambivalent mobilities' refers not only to the ambivalences of the farmer-migrants themselves - both those who have stayed in Manica and those who have left - but also to the ambivalences towards them amongst different actors in the various sites to which they have relocated. The study is intended to explore how a specific if internally diverse group of displaced Zimbabweans are reconfiguring their lives outside Zimbabwe (although not entirely separate from it), and to examine what role these particular migrations are playing in the re-shaping of both material and moral economies in different places and at different scales. At another level, the study is concerned with the paradoxes of dislocation and relocation that occur simultaneously on several levels, and the repositionings (material and symbolic, forced and chosen) this generates amongst displaced subjects in their relationships to themselves and to other people and places.

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0305-7070

VL - 36

SP - 395

EP - 416

JO - Journal of Southern African Studies

JF - Journal of Southern African Studies

IS - 2

ER -