Zimbabwe's Migrants and South Africa's Border Farms
The Roots of Impermanence

This book addresses the complex labour and life conditions faced by workers in the agricultural borderlands of northern South Africa.

Maxim Bolt (Author)

9781107527836, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 June 2017

268 pages, 24 b/w illus. 2 maps
23 x 15.3 x 1.6 cm, 0.41 kg

'… an interesting and inspiring book that offers a range of insights for scholars concerned with border economies, labour migration, masculinity, the anthropology of agriculture and South African studies.' Sylvia Meichsner, Journal of Borderlands Studies

During the Zimbabwean crisis, millions crossed through the apartheid-era border fence, searching for ways to make ends meet. Maxim Bolt explores the lives of Zimbabwean migrant labourers, of settled black farm workers and their dependants, and of white farmers and managers, as they intersect on the border between Zimbabwe and South Africa. Focusing on one farm, this book investigates the role of a hub of wage labour in a place of crisis. A close ethnographic study, it addresses the complex, shifting labour and life conditions in northern South Africa's agricultural borderlands. Underlying these challenges are the Zimbabwean political and economic crisis of the 2000s and the intensified pressures on commercial agriculture in South Africa following market liberalization and post-apartheid land reform. But, amidst uncertainty, farmers and farm workers strive for stability. The farms on South Africa's margins are centers of gravity, islands of residential labour in a sea of informal arrangements.

1. Introduction
2. 'It's in our blood, it's in our skin'
3. Behind the mountain
4. Producing permanence
5. Reimagining men
6. 'Management' or 'paternalism?'
7. Scaling up
8. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Agriculture & farming [TV], Agriculture & related industries [KNAC], Labour economics [KCF], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Sociology: work & labour [JHBL], Migration, immigration & emigration [JFFN], Social & political philosophy [HPS], Social & cultural history [HBTB], African history [HBJH]