Cosmopolitanism ‘from below’ and claim-making in the Global South

ABSTRACT

The increased presence of migrant entrepreneurs in Downtown, Harare has been met with ambivalence and suspicion. As Zimbabwean nationals forge a ‘new nationalism’, they confront migrant populations in their midst making claims to the very urban spaces and territories on which their lives and livelihoods are anchored. Using ethnographic inquiry among Nigerian entrepreneurs in Harare, the article explores how this specific migrant population draws on varied and often competing systems of cosmopolitan tactics (e.g. religion, human rights rhetoric and Pan-Africanism) to position themselves in the spaces and networks needed to achieve pragmatic goals. Through these cosmopolitan tactics, migrants view places as inherently heterogeneous, interdependent and interconnected through global flows of people, capital and information rather than demarcated into mutually bounded and exclusive entities. In so doing, the article offers a vivid case study of the transformative power of cosmopolitanism ‘from below’ within urban spaces, where diversity and innovation intersect.

KEYWORDS:

• Cosmopolitanism ‘from below’
• diversity
• exclusion
• nationalism
• Nigerian entrepreneurs

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 A programme implemented by the government of Zimbabwe in the early 2000s to redistribute land from the white commercial farmers to the highly marginalised black populace.

2 For example in the morning of Monday 7 February 2011 a group of ravaging ZANU PF youths singing revolutionary songs descended on Downtown. This was an enormous mission, carried out in a single stroke without any warning. They targeted Nigerian owned businesses at Gulf complex and adjacent streets, in the process besieging their businesses in a classic xenophobic style.

3 A policy promulgated by the government of Zimbabwe to strengthen bilateral relations between Zimbabwe and Asian countries in the late 2000s

4 All names used in this article are pseudonyms for privacy protection purposes.

5 Liberation struggle is the guerrilla war of 1966–1979 which led to the end of white-minority rule in Rhodesia and to the de jure independence of Zimbabwe.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation [grant number 41600690].