Land Reform Induced Migration, Youth Land Governance and Belonging in Zimbabwe

As scholars and practitioners increasingly navigate the Anthropocene, this paper interrogates belonging and insularity in the context of land reform induced migration, youth land governance, and developments in Zimbabwe’s resettlement areas herein referred to as agrarian territories. While Zimbabwe’s land reform, particularly the Fast Track Land Reform Programme and the concomitant agrarian changes have attracted wide scholarship, paltry attention has been attached to the associated youth mobilities and belonging. Moreover, scholarship that approaches youth and belonging in the resettlement areas from ‘insularity’ and ‘island imaginaries’ lens is vacuous. Accordingly, little attention has been paid to how insularity and island imaginaries shape the resources and aspirations available for local youth, and their orientations to move to and from the resettlement areas. Based on Zimbabwe as the heuristic case study and a corpus of data generated through the ‘Social Policy Dimensions of Land and Agrarian Reform in International Perspective’ research project, the paper addresses four focal questions: a) What are the youth dimensions of land reform and the associated mobilities? b) How does land (in)access, (non) participation in land governance, and other opportunities influence youth belonging? c) How does application of insularity and island imaginaries facilitate enhanced understanding of mobility – migration to, across, and from the resettlements, or obstacles to migration? d) How can the positive dimensions of youth belonging and citizenship within and beyond the resettlement areas be improved? Overall, the paper contributes novel framing and research findings to a global discussion of youth belonging and mobility in an agrarian context.