Mobility and labour regimes in Southern Africa: From Mobile workers to workers on the move. A perspective from Mozambique

Abstract

In the XIXth century, the discovery of the gold mines launched an industrializa-tion process in what is today the Republic of South Africa. From then on, wage mi-gration in southern Africa has been a sub-ject tackled from different academic dis-ciplines. However, mainstream academic literature  keeps  the  focus  on  the  core  of  the mining region. Mozambique, despite being  the  origin  of  many  miners,  is  not  well  represented  in  the  regional  debates.  In this article, through an analysis of ex-isting literature on Mozambican migrants and their impact in present day rural live-lihoods,  I  argue  that  a  perspective  from  Mozambique  can  contribute  with  new  insights  to  several  long  lasting  academic  debates.  Furthermore,  the  Mozambican  perspective  proposed  is  useful  to  show ome  disciplinary  shortcomings  and  to  encourage  multidisciplinary  approaches  to rural wage migration.