Commuter Migration Across Artificial Frontiers: The Case of Partitioned Communities Along the Zimbabwe-Mozambique Border

ABSTRACT

This article engages the border perceptions and experiences/uses of partitioned African borderland communities along the Zimbabwe–Mozambique border so as to understand and explain the prevalence of cross-border commuter migration. Using ethnographic data gathered from the ethnic Shona communities straddled across the border, it observes that commuting is rampant due to subtle ethno-nationalist beliefs that have flouted official norms of sovereign nation-statism and control. Despite the fact that these trans-border communities are quite conscious of the border's existence, they have chosen not to recognize its juridical functions, claiming that it is artificial. Hence, they have viewed it as an imaginary boundary; a transnational environment or frontier where socio-economic-cultural inter-connections can be made without restrictions. Thus, many commute daily on foot using illegal crossing points scattered along the mountainous boundary. Those in Mozambique prefer shuttling to the better Zimbabwean schools and hospitals across the border, while those in Zimbabwe conduct kinship rites, shopping/trade and engage traditional authorities in Mozambique. In the process, the Zimbabwe–Mozambican border has been reduced to an artificial and arbitrary boundary which does not respond to what the local people believe to be rational boundaries. Consequently, the border has become highly fluid and elastic as it constantly shifts according to the dictates of the partitioned communities.