Migration and education in Zimbabwe and South Africa

How African migrants establish themselves within new contexts through struggles for education is a relatively under-researched phenomenon in South Africa. The notion of “idioms of rootlessness” has been developed to make sense of migrants’ understandings of new hostile environments. This article troubles this botanical metaphor through an exploration of the life-history of one Zimbabwean woman who migrated to South Africa and the specific role of education in her trajectory in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Her story is examined against the backdrop of the changing political economy of education in Zimbabwe and South Africa. In highlighting how she navigates borders for the education of her children and decides which children to educate where it shows how educational values, beliefs and practices also migrate. The paper argues that her struggle for the education of her children can also be interpreted as an expression of the desire for attachment in both spaces and as a means of claiming a place in both countries, across borders, for herself and her children.