M.A. Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011 / The thesis investigates the reasons for the decision made by many Zimbabweans to self-settle in remote villages in Limpopo. It shows that while significant literature exists on Zimbabweans in border and urban areas, there are several inter-related factors that are drawing Zimbabweans to rural areas. Thus, this study challenges many common assumptions about cross-border migration while supporting the idea that migrants settle in areas where economic stability can be achieved. This study also shows that the existence of parallel government structures and policy frameworks plays a major role in the ability of Zimbabweans to settle in these areas. This is a case study of Zimbabweans settling in a rural area where there are no pre-existing ethnic or kinship ties. Utilizing empirical qualitative data, this study outlines how Zimbabweans have achieved a degree of stability in one area of Limpopo through a series of rights procurements and access to parallel government structures. This has legitimized their presence within the village while their presence in South Africa outside of this village is precarious at denizenship within the village as Zimbabweans have access to services that are not accessible to them outside best. The legitimacy created by accessing these parallel structures has created de facto of the village. This denizenship, and the security it bestows, is an instrumental factor in the decision making process that had led many Zimbabweans to self-settle in rural areas.

This research investigates why people acquire dual citizenship. It focuses on the acquisition of dual citizenship through residency, with a processual lens and under conditions of “ordinariness” to tackle aspects that are usually overlooked. It builds on the differentiated access to dual citizenship granted to Peruvian migrants by the Italian and Spanish citizenship regimes. The 79 Peruvian migrants included in the study are either prospective dual citizens or actual dual citizens. The research builds on qualitative methods ranging from participant observation to in-depth semi-structured interviews. It investigates the motivations, expectations and contingences that bring migrants to the status acquisition. The analysis distinguishes between early and postponed acquisitions to highlight how practices of convenience and everyday forms of substantive commitment can coexist under the same national umbrella. Moreover it suggests that the availability and accessibility of the dual status cannot be conflated with a supposed desirability. Although nation-states design their citizenship and immigration regimes according to normative stances that should shape their ideal citizenry, individuals qua migrants manage to forge their own way into the host community while formally abiding the law. Thus, migrants’ pathways across statuses are the result of structural constraints as much as personal preferences and deliberate positioning vis-à-vis nation-states. The study shows how people navigate the laws through both legal and semi-legal means; how they cultivate constellations of belonging that do not necessarily match formal memberships; and how they invest citizenship with multiple meanings that can converge, collide, or simply bypass the state-led rhetoric on national membership.