ESTRATEGIA DE REPOSICIONAMIENTO
4.2 ANÁLISIS FODA
The transnational habitus as explained and deployed in a number of studies on migrant adaptation provides a much distilled and fitting framework for the
analysis of a migration specific problem. Looking at the Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa, they are in a state of perennial limbo as discussed in numerous studies on Southern African migration. They often walk the bounded vicinity of being present yet existentially absent and not belonging to the South African milieu. As indicated, Landau and Freemantle (2010) describe this position as tactical cosmopolitanism while Kihato (2013) uses liminality as a conceptual descriptor. What the transnational habitus does is that it captures the sense of simultaneous embeddedness that characterises the many forms of existence by Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa. While their characterisation as transnational is contested, they possess many forms that conform to this
characterisation, for example, the intensity of their communication with family and relatives back in Zimbabwe suggests a continuing embeddedness of sorts in the country of origin. The transnational habitus, as will be further explained in chapter seven of this thesis, emerges or is produced rather than imposed on the immigrants. It is the result of processes of hybridization and infusion of both the home country socio-economic circumstances and the host country's
circumstances. In other words, the habitus itself being a system of durable dispositions, it is produced within a specific social field in the home country and being a system of transposable dispositions, it is subject to change in
circumstances where it is incongruent to the social field of the host country. As such, I argue in this thesis that, Zimbabwean migrants carry a specific habitus on
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arrival in South Africa and such habitus contributes to the structuring of a social field that enables their continued survival. Such social field in turn continually structures and modifies their Zimbabwean habitus in order to sustain a degree of fit between the immigrants and the specific socio-economic context in
Johannesburg.
4.8
Conclusion: reflecting on strategy, tactics and habitus
There is an added complexity to the manner in which migrant spatial decision- making can be conceptualised and somehow understood and interpreted as some authors have criticised the approach which by default relegates migrants into marginality (Raghuram, Henry and Bornat 2010). This is a direct criticism of the commonly perceived approach of strategy and tactics, which by default treats migrants as marginal and relegates them to the status of tactics or outsiders with no foreseeable route to strategy, seen as available only to the powerful. However, the supposed distinction is not as simple as the shortcoming suggests. In reality, as shown in the preceding sections, the dichotomy between outsiders and insiders is a false one. Likewise, the distinction between strategy and tactics is false and only exists at the level of analysis rather than practical engagement. This research has taken the position that these supposed binaries ought to be engaged with in a much more nuanced and careful manner that acknowledges the complexities of the migrant condition.
Casting the powerful as representing South African society and legislative arms of government proves problematic as it gives the impression that South African society is a monolithic whole yet in reality, it is fractured, with many crevices and is far from coherent. It is a result of such lack of togetherness that researchers such as Landau (2012) have questioned the very essence of the host community by arguing that in today's society it is difficult to talk of hosts and guests when discussing migrant issues. Engaging the strategy vs. tactics dialectic opens many avenues of analysis and at another level allows for a combined engagement in the
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form of a habitus that characterises a commonality and shared social reality. As indicated in the preceding sections, habitus is both constitutive and constituted in social practice and therefore best represents the approach I have adopted in this research. The approach considers the migrants together with the circumstances of their migrant lives as informed on a daily basis by the conditions that they grapple with in South Africa.
In a discussion of how migration theorists utilise the concept of habitus in the analysis of migrant issues, Raghuran et al argue that they often ignore the fact that migrants and non-migrants are part of the same social habitus. In essence, they exist within the same social reality albeit with different relationships and
experiences of this same habitus. Both the migrants and non-migrants constitute the habitus, so it is not enough to understand only what migrants do and
experience without due regard to what the non-migrants experience and do within this shared social reality or habitus. Bourdieu is clear that habitus is not meant to be an explanatory framework but provides thinking tools for empirical analysis (Jenkins 1992). It is an important corrective to a strong tendency within migration studies to focus only on the group under study and it is a difficult tendency to depart from. Certainly, "Zimbabwean space" is not a dominant space in
Johannesburg, and it can only be discussed in terms of a field of social and spatial relations. Zimbabwean space may in fact not exist per se in consequence but rather may only be a constitutive element in the ongoing construction and reconstruction of space within and across Johannesburg. In addition, the
"Zimbabwean habitus" is actively changing in interaction with the habitus in the host society. While shorthand terms such as "Zimbabwean space" and
"Zimbabwean spatial decision-making" are used in this research, there is a considerable complexity behind the words.
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5
Chapter Five: Zimbabwean Migration in
Context
5.1
Introduction
This contextual chapter maps the literature on Zimbabwean migration and locates the study within the global discourse that has focused on the Zimbabwean
diaspora in the post 2000 era, specifically the intensifying engagement with the migration of Zimbabweans to South Africa. The chapter starts with a brief discussion of: the early forms of contract labour migration to South Africa; the movement of black exiles during the liberation war; and, the post 1980 flight to South Africa of white Rhodesians. The chapter then goes on to a more detailed discussion of the waves of migration by black Zimbabweans to South Africa from the 1990s. Thus far, three edited books have brought together a collection of works that focus on Zimbabwean migration to various global destinations as well as the nature of the nascent Zimbabwean diaspora. Two of the books are 2010 publications, one edited by Crush and Tevera titled, "Zimbabwe's exodus: Crisis, Migration, Survival" and the other edited by McGregor and Primorac titled, "Zimbabwe's New Diaspora: Displacement and the Cultural Politics of Survival". The third is a 2012 publication edited by Chiumbu and Musemwa entitled,
"Crisis! What Crisis? The Multiple Dimensions of the Zimbabwean Crisis". These are the highlight of the scholarly attention to the subject of Zimbabwean migration over the past decade, but there are also a number of significant journal articles (for example, Bloch 2006; Bloch 2010; Chikanda and Dodson 2013; Hammar,
McGregor and Landau 2010) and student dissertations (for example, Beremauro 2013; Hungwe 2013; Mpofu 2014; Pasura 2008). In addition to highlighting the historical literature on Zimbabwean migration, this chapter discusses the key emerging themes from the literature that focuses on Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa. The main highlight is the overwhelming focus on the human rights
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abuses of Zimbabwean migrants by the police in South Africa and the lack of access to services for irregular migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.