Beyond Return: Mukheristas and Cyclical Mobility between Mozambique and South Africa

Abstract (English)

This paper explores the cyclical mobilities of the mukheristas—women engaged in cross-border trade between Mozambique and South Africa—as a powerful lens through which to rethink the concept of return in migration studies. Starting from Maputo and moving toward Johannesburg via the Ressano Garcia border, in continuous and circular flows, I analyze how these mobilities not only traverse but also shape and are shaped by the cities along the route. The lived experiences of the mukheristas reveal an unceasing circulation of bodies, goods, emotions, and cultural practices across national borders. The mukheristas are constantly on the move and narrate their lives through their journeys between both sides of the border, cultivating particular forms of proximity and distance within the spaces they inhabit, from a perspective of life and sociability in move. These women thus engage in complex temporal and spatial returns, where each journey is not merely a physical crossing but an ongoing act of maintaining family ties, ensuring economic survival, and reinforcing social belonging. Their practices encompass both symbolic and material returns: remittances, reinvestment in their home communities, and the recreation of transnational social fields. I examine how these circulations challenge normative notions of migration and return, highlighting the role of Mozambican women in building transnational economies and redefining the meanings of home and belonging. By situating the experiences of the mukheristas within broader debates on circular migration, urban dynamics, and gendered labor, I argue that their trajectories exemplify the layered and continuous nature of return, disrupting the simplistic binaries of origin and destination. It is a life in transit, composing its own grammar to negotiate harm and nurture hopes for possible futures—captured in the customary Mozambican saying: “desenrascar a vida”, getting by or making do (in free translation).