Mobilities in Zimbabwe: Colonial Echoes and Contradictions in the Migration/Nonmigration Binary

Abstract: This article argues that migration and sedentarism in precolonial Zimbabwe were mutually constitutive, rather than opposites, as suggested by colonial and contemporary migration governance in Zimbabwe. It highlights indigenous configurations that migration studies often gloss over. Using archival documents and current laws relevant to the governance of migration and space in Southern Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, respectively, it demonstrates that migration and nonmigration became binaries only with the advent of the colonial state, which regarded precolonial African mobilities as inimical to colonial governmentality and its sedentarist “civilization” by subjugation agenda. The article draws from the role of migration in precolonial sedentarism and state formation as well as its role in the establishment of the settler colony of Southern Rhodesia. It highlights the migration and nonmigration contradictions inherent in settler colonialism and the inheritance of the colonial governance of migration and mobility in postindependence Zimbabwe.