Abstract
The paper investigates the interplay between informality, mobility, and urban space in Sub-Saharan Africa, by focussing on the practices of the mukheristas, Mozambican informal cross-border traders. In the mukhero, informality and mobility intersect and constantly reshape each other, in a way that has turned a customary survival strategy into a phenomenon well-blended with the global logics underpinning contemporary urban processes. The mukheristas deploy movement across transnational distances as a livelihood strategy to overcome structural constraints and, by doing so, they interconnect translocal urban spaces and heterogeneous networks. By re-tracing their socio-spatial practices between Johannesburg and Maputo through a grounded-theory approach based on multi-sited ethnographic explorations, the paper tries to unfold crucial, but underestimated process pertaining to the constitution of the urban life in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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Notes
- 1.
As E. explained to me: «The business in Brazil, China, and India is about this artificial hair. They go to buy in those countries. They make big profits from this business. It’s usually the youngest ones who do this. They are between 20 and 35 years old, the young generation of mukheristas working on a global scale. They transport hair squeezed in backpacks. It’s cheap, easy, and convenient. By doing this business for a few years, they manage to open saloons and buy houses in South Africa». (Extract from an interview done in June 2014, in Johannesburg).
- 2.
Informal trade across large distances and borders is common and widespread in Africa and has recently been recognized as important by the Economic Commission for Africa, which has noted that informal cross-border trade is the main source of job creation in Africa, which provides between 20 and 75% of total employment in most of the countries.
- 3.
Between 2004 and 2013, cross-border traffic from Mozambique to South African border towns and great cities has increased from around 400,000 to nearly 1.8 million documented entries per annum, also eased by the simpler procedures to access the country.
- 4.
Female involvement in the practice started in colonial times, when women used to migrate with their husbands and has increased considerably since the civil war (1981–1994), when women used to go to the border zones in quest for food for their children and people while the men were fighting to become predominant nowadays. Women’s mobility has helped to scatter the rigid division of roles in the Mozambican society, marking the exit from their confinement within the household space, as well as the possibility of engaging with other socio-economic spheres. The mukhero has represented an essential tool for women’s emancipation and empowerment, as well as a particular driving force of socio-cultural change, especially in the urban contexts. While the informal economy still presents a significant gender gap, with women earning on average less than men, the mukhero allows women to accumulate more capital than men and it is not rare that women employ other men, with important implications on gender relationships.
- 5.
‘Mamanas’ is a moniker used for the oldest mukherista, implying dutiful respect for the age and the fortune accumulated over years of hard work, by cheering up from original conditions of extreme poverty.
- 6.
The definition of the African middle class is difficult and controversial. It can be defined and subdivided on the basis of the data provided by ILO into three categories, named: “near poor” (2–4 USD/day), “emerging middle class”, (2–13 USD/day) and “middle class and above” (>13 USD/day).
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Acknowledgements
The article reports some of the results from the Ph.D. research conducted by the author in the Doctoral School of Regional Planning and Public Policy of the IUAV University of Venice between 2014 and 2017. In particular, the author would like to show her gratitude to Raymond Mapakata for the valuable help provided during the research.
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Piscitelli, P. (2018). Mobile Urbanity in Southern Africa. The Socio-Spatial Practices of Informal Cross-Border Traders Between Johannesburg and Maputo. In: Petrillo, A., Bellaviti, P. (eds) Sustainable Urban Development and Globalization. Research for Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61988-0_3
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