Twentieth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

This paper examines the various paralegal structures and diverse networks used by migrants to secure coveted land in peri-urban spaces. To examine this matter, the study employed an ethnographic inquiry of Lydiate, an informal peri-urban settlement in Norton town of Zimbabwe. The finding of the paper is that, Malawian migrants resort to alternative institutions in securing land in peri-urban spaces. Kinship and fictive kinship are resorted to by migrants seeking land. As well, migrants turn to the ruling party for land where they can build their shacks. Migrants also resort to the occult, a religious and ritual based form of authority that is associated with deathly symbols. Because it is feared by adherence and indigenes alike, the occult is able to yield and guarantee land to those seeking it in its name. Based on these observations, the paper concludes that, migrant communities are often not as chaotic and dead places as they are often read in literature. While some scholars carelessly regard squatter and migrant settlements as devoid, unplanned and without order, this study suggests that, beneath the semblance of chaos that characterizes squatter settlements, there is another different ‘world’; ordered and shared by those who constitute it. The current study is important in that, it broadens the scope of players that in the end need to be engaged in the planning of peri-urban spaces in the age of transnational mobility. These players are the patrons and other primordial forms of authority which include kinship and the feared occult.