Economies of care and the politics of death among Zimbabwean returnees from South Africa

Abstract

This article explores how Zimbabwe’s prolonged politico-economic crisis and large-scale migration to South Africa have impacted care practices surrounding transnational death. Focusing on the repatriation of dying and deceased injivas (low-income migrants from Matabeleland), it examines how return migrants and their social networks seek to maintain social continuity amid economic and legal challenges, highlighting the importance of injivas returning home before they die, and the ways that the economic cost of dying is managed. Furthermore, while much has been written about African burial rituals and state involvement, this article demonstrates how intimate death-related care intertwines with economic realities, state documentation, cross-border practices and the political economies of migration. Specifically, I investigate how injivas, their kin, peers and authorities manage issues of “(un) documentedness” and ambiguous legal identities for safe passage to the afterlife, with frontline state agents, such as immigration officers, balancing formal procedures with local moral understanding of belonging and care.