Deviant Destinations : Zimbabwe and North to South Migration

Through interviews with migrants to Zimbabwe, Rose Jaji problematizes classificatory binaries and regionalization of terminologies in the migration lexicon. She argues that while North-South and South-North migrants’ experiences differ, motivations for migration transcend classificatory boundaries and the North-South divide.

In this book the author addresses the tenacity of the nation-state and how it continues to regulate transnational migration. She critiques assumptions on motivations embedded in the North-South dichotomy and shows how motivations transcend the regional divide with specific reference to non-missionary migrants in Zimbabwe in relation to South-North migrants. She also addresses Zimbabwe’s non-conformity to the conventional profile of a destination country. The circumstances of migrants from the global North living in Zimbabwe also challenge the migration lexicon in which countries and mobile populations are named and categorized in an either/or schematic. The author addresses spatial demarcation of space premised on the colonial dividend and neoliberalism’s influence on the organization and occupation of urban space. She specifically juxtaposes non-missionary migrants’ lives in the gated communities of Harare with those of missionaries in the low-income neighborhoods and at a rural hospital. She analyzes transnational outcomes in relation to the liminality that multi-sited belonging and cosmopolitanism engender.