PEOPLE WITHOUT FATHERS - MOZAMBICANS IN SWAZILAND 1888-1993

This article considers recent influxes of Mozambicans into Swaziland i n the light of historical patterns of migration and incorporation. It explores the perspectives of national and local leaders, migrants and refugees, revealing the weakness of accounts of outsiders' integration which focus only on the views of national institutions and the public discourse of the hosting society. The distinction between 'refugees' and 'economic migrants' distorts the causes of migration and is blind to local, historically constructed notions of hospitality and communit y membership; it can also be damaging when used insensitively in inter national assistance programme. The article argues that an assertion of Swazi identity and shared history as a strategy to legitimate communi ty membership and to ascertain rights to distributed goods can succeed only in specific circumstances. By situating claims to kinship, commo n ethnicity and neighbourhood in a broader historical and political-ec onomic context it shows them to be contingent, and continually renegot iated. By focusing on differentiation within the chiefdoms of Swazilan d's border with Mozambique, it shows the varied costs and benefits of hosting refugees, and highlights the way in which hospitality and expl oitation coexist.