ABSTRACT

This chapter highlights how the Zimbabwe–South Africa border is configured between the states and among people. It draws particular attention to the social processes in people’s negotiation of the border and the processes of agency and subjectification associated with the movements. It presents the corridor as dating back to importing labour in South Africa during apartheid (1948–91), subsequent changes when Zimbabwe gained its independence in 1980, South Africa’s democratisation in the mid-1990s, and Zimbabwe’s almost two-decade economic crisis. The chapter argues that poor South Africans who have seen few economic benefits from their country’s political freedom perceive black Zimbabwean migrants as a quintessential threat. They are educated, English speaking, and largely able to disappear within the South African body politic. The results are cultural performances of identity and social processes including xenophobia to construct boundaries between migrants and their hosts within Johannesburg, South Africa’s primary city that is 500 km from any formal border.