The Village in the City, the City in the Village: Migrants in Lilongwe

Abstract

While the impact of transnational migration on Malawi's economic and social history is widely recognised, less is known about the country's urbanisation. The end of large-scale labour recruitment to South Africa appears to have increased internal migration, further encouraged by the political transition in the early 1990s. On the basis of fieldwork among migrants in a poor 'squatter' settlement in the capital, the article shows the economic and symbolic significance of the village in most low-income migrants' aspirations. After analysing the emergence of Lilongwe's low-income residential areas and the general characteristics of contemporary rural-urban migration, the article uses several variables to assess migrants' commitment to their rural areas of origin and to the city. A major finding is that while migration to urban areas rarely results in permanent settlement, the desire to improve the conditions of life in villages frequently leads to periods of residence in town. The significance of the village extends beyond economic considerations, as is demonstrated by the moral issues that witchcraft and funerals evoke in both rural and urban settings. The findings support recent perspectives on urbanism in South-central Africa by cautioning against teleological interpretations of rural-urban migration. The contribution of the article is less to establish a particular pattern or 'strategy' of contemporary migration in Malawi than to draw attention to the simultaneous and overlapping presence of urban and rural spaces in migrants' lives.