Childhood and children's migration in the era of COVID‐19: A case study of Zimbabwean children/young people's migration to South Africa

Abstract

This paper draws on research with a group of Zimbabwean orphaned young people. It explores their experiences of migrating to SA during the COVID-19 period when official borders were closed. It draws attention to the complexities of south-south migration in the era of COVID-19 in a way that situates the orphaned child migrants as having contradictory, fluid identities that are simultaneously victimised, agentic and infinitely more complex than the dominant binary representation of adult/child. Orphaned children, child migrant, COVID-19, Zimbabwe, Childhood