Abstract
Over the past two decades, Zimbabwe has become synonymous with emigration, as declining economic and political conditions have driven a large portion of its citizens to other neighboring countries on the African continent and beyond. Not surprisingly, a number of studies have documented Zimbabweans’ outward movement to countries such as South Africa and the United Kingdom. Implicit in these works is an understanding that the country has stopped attracting international migrants, particularly those from the Global North. In Deviant Destinations, Rose Jaji challenges the view of Zimbabwe purely as an emigration state by focusing on migrants from the Global North who moved to the country before and after the onset of the current crisis. Jaji argues that despite the myriad of challenges facing Zimbabwe, which makes it far from the archetypical migrant destination, a significant number of migrants from the Global North still continue to find the country an attractive destination—hence, the book’s title Deviant Destinations.
Jaji’s book is a result of fieldwork conducted with thirty-five migrants from the Global North living in Zimbabwe between 2015 and 2017. The migrants on which the book focuses moved to Zimbabwe in either the 1980s/early 1990s, before the onset of the current economic crisis in 1997, or afterward. The book is organized into six chapters. After the introduction, Chapter 1 makes the case for examining North-to-South migration, which has often been overlooked in favor of South-to-North migration. It also provides definitions of the Global North and South. Given the fluidity of these related concepts, some readers may have problems with the definition provided by the author. The chapter also provides a detailed history of migration to Zimbabwe, from the Bantu migration to European occupation.
Chapter 2 challenges the rationale of using the nation-state as an analytic framework in migration studies, arguing, instead, for a transnational approach that strikes a balance between the nation-state and the individual migrant. Chapter 3, which bears the book’s title, discusses the paradox of Zimbabwe as a migrant-destination country despite its economic and political challenges. It provides an exhaustive description of Zimbabwe’s descent into the political and economic chaos which has made it an unattractive destination for migrants. The chapter also provides narratives for migrants’ decision to move to Zimbabwe. A large number of them, the chapter shows, had previously lived in other African countries and viewed Zimbabwe as a superior destination compared to those other locales, for instance, in terms of infrastructure and security.
Chapter 4 provides the motivations for migration to Zimbabwe and argues for the “limitations of the nation-state as a framework to understand migration to this country because it obscures possibilities that are overshadowed by the country’s crisis” (p. 77). It shows that the motivations for migrants from the Global North in Harare are similar to those motivating South-to-North migrants. For instance, some migrants from the Global North are attracted by economic opportunities that are available in the Global South. Chapter 5 shows how race and residential location affect migrants’ experiences: they usually live in the low-density suburbs where “the rich barricade themselves from the inefficiency and incompetence of city governance manifest in intermittent cholera and typhoid outbreaks in high-density suburbs” (p. 113). It argues that migration provides some migrants a chance for upward social mobility in terms of the respect they are accorded in Zimbabwe, a chance to improve their lifestyle (e.g., home ownership), and better life in retirement (more buying power). Chapter 6 discusses transnationalism and its outcomes among migrants in Zimbabwe, showing, for example, that some non-missionary migrants who came to Zimbabwe before the economic crisis now own property in the country, with their increased attachment corresponding with a declining engagement with their origin country.
The absence of statistics on the number of migrants from the Global North living in Zimbabwe is a glaring weakness of the book. Such information could have been gleaned from widely accessible sources, such as Zimbabwe census reports. Some statistics cited in the book - for instance, the claim that there were 3 to 4 million Zimbabwean migrants in 2008 (p. 62) - are based on press reports, not from a credible source. An examination of the policies governing foreign nationals’ entry, settlement, and work conditions in Zimbabwe could have allowed for comparisons of the barriers faced by North-to-South migrants and by South-to-North migrants. In an environment characterized by high unemployment levels among the country’s skilled labor force, there was need for the author to examine the policy framework governing the employment of skilled nationals in the country. Finally, since the book is based on interviews with 35 individuals, to what extent their experiences are representative of the general experiences of migrants from the North living in Zimbabwe is not clear.
Notwithstanding these shortcomings, Deviant Destinations makes an important contribution to the literature on migration from the North to the South. Conceptually, it shows how motivations that are normally linked to South-to-North migration can also be observed in North-to-South migration. In this specific case, the book shows how migrants can choose to migrate to undesirable or deviant destinations.