Refugees and squatters: Immigration and the politics of territory on the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border

For Mozambicans, border-crossing is neither new nor liberating. Many curren t analyses of refugees, labour migrants, smugglers, and other 'transnationa l subjects' emphasize their range of options, arguing that they are less an d less constrained by porous, politically 'soft' international borders. Thi s article argues that for at least a segment, the Mozambique-Zimbabwe borde r is hard and constraining, and has been so since the beginning of the twen tieth century. Mozambican small-holders do cross it, but emigration strips them of rights and privileges they enjoy in their own country. In Vhimba, a Zimbabwean community on the Mozambican border, headmen have allocated farm land to Mozambican migrants on much less favourable terms than they have to Zimbabwean internal migrants. During Mozambique's recent war, the double s tandard became especially stark. Headmen and other Zimbabweans associated t hese destitute refugees with pre-colonial clients, and refugees behaved acc ordingly. rn a fashion modelled loosely on nineteenth century pledging, hos ts circumscribed refugees' ability to negotiate their access to land. Speci fically, Vhimba's headmen exploited Mozambican migrants as pawns in territo rial disputes with the state and with a private land-owner. Along this inte rnational boundary, smell-holders revived archaic mechanisms of subjugation and retooled them for contemporary purposes.