- Title
- Skilled Migrants and Remittances in a Development Context: A Social Value Analysis of Skills and Home Remittances among Zimbabweans living in East London, South Africa
- Creator
- Mafuso, Leo Tsakata
- Subject
- Migration Emigrant remittances Migrant labor
- Date
- 2018
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Doctoral
- Type
- PhD(Sociology)
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10353/8840
- Identifier
- vital:33672
- Description
- Against the backdrop of a growing orthodoxy that places the issue of home remittances by a country’s emigrant citizens at the centre of national and international development, this study presents a social value analysis of skills and home remittances in the Zimbabwean context. The study unveils the narratives of skilled Zimbabwean citizens living and working in East London, South Africa, with specific regard to the extent to which the revenues gained by the Zimbabwean economy through home remittances offset the skills lost by the same economy through the emigration of its skilled citizens. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, with data drawn from a survey of 158 skilled Zimbabweans, three key informant interviews (with officers of immigration stakeholder organisations) and one focus group discussion. The study found that an overwhelming majority of survey respondents regularly remitted money home, and believed that such remittances helped them to fulfil filial and other familial obligations, besides being vital to the Zimbabwean economy as a whole. They emphasised, however, that the total value of home remittances, though substantial in monetary terms, was miniscule when compared to the skills the country had lost as a result of migration. Respondents expressed the view that home remittances could not substitute for the skills lost by a country and that the proper utilisation of, and compensation for, their skills at home would develop their country faster. The study thus cuts through the dominant discourse on the developmental significance of home remittances and provides insights into the importance of skilled professionals in the Zimbabwean context, and the developmental consequences of seeing them simply as “remitters” of foreign exchange. By privileging the perspectives of skilled migrants, the study highlights how skilled professionals see themselves and their role within the migration-development debate. This therefore was a study of the migration-remittance-development nexus as though the migrant mattered.
- Format
- 310 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- University of Fort Hare
- Publisher
- Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
- Language
- English
- Rights
- University of Fort Hare
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UFH Department of Sociology and Anthropology
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | 2018.Final Phd Thesis.FOR GRADUATION.Mafuso.pdf | 3 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |