Living on the margins of a global economy: African families, their work and livelihoods in Bulawayo’s Townships, Zimbabwe

Dr. Otrude N. Moyo is a scholar of social policy and teaches at the University of Southern Maine, USA. Her research addresses comparative social welfare policy connecting themes on families, work, and socio-economic changes, inequality, extending to transnational issues within the realm of community, and international development. Her doctoral thesis dealt with household work and provisioning strategies in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Dr. Moyo is also involved in an ethnographic study exploring how families of African immigrants and refugees work and provision in the United States and linking their livelihoods to their places of origin.

This seminar is based on an introductory chapter to Living on the Margins, Dr. Moyo’s work in progress. The discussion contextualizes African family and livelihood experiences within the histories of marginality in the political economy of Zimbabwe, as well as the global socio-political changes.

The discussion draws on the idea of marginality to illustrate the peculiarities of the political economy of Zimbabwe, which has used various forces to create governable subjects and as such created people on the margins. The attempt is to connect the historical politico-economy of Zimbabwe and the historical context of these families in order to understand family organization, economic and social behaviour and survival strategies of households, at the same time not losing sight of individual members and families as independent actors.