‘Locked Down But Not Locked Out’: Everyday Experiences of Migrant Traders During the COVID-19 Pandemic Era in Harare, Zimbabwe

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic presented possibilities of socio-political rapture as it stimulated mass evacuations and remarkable efforts to emplace. However, regardless of the measures to restrict non-essential travel and barring the entry of people into cities as a way of curbing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, urban migrants invented and reincarnated ways and means of negotiating entry into economic spaces in an effort to avoid becoming marooned in time and space. This ethnographic study explored these dynamics using the case of Nigerian migrant traders in Harare’s informal economic spaces. By drawing on their narratives, we argue that surviving the pandemic was made possible by forming, maintaining and sustaining social networks of sort. Therefore, while uncertainties (COVID-19) interrupt time, routines and the mundane aspects of life, it also has a productive potential for people to make sense of the hazards that confront them, hence reflexively crafting solutions and fashioning possible futures.