Mozambican Refugees Research Articles

Refugee settlement as dialogue: conversations and contestations between the Tanzanian state, Mozambican liberation leaders and humanitarian officials (1964–1971)

ABSTRACT During decolonization, African host states, liberation leaders and humanitarian officials debated, negotiated and modified who they each thought best to manage refugee settlements: expatriates or African staff. Using 1960s postcolonial Tanzania as a case study, this article synthesizes a range of archival materials from the agencies responsible for establishing Mozambican refugee settlements in Tanzania: the Lutheran World Federation, Tanganyikan Christian Refugee Service and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It demonstrates and interrogates why these humanitarian agencies and the Tanzanian state sought to have fewer expatriates in refugee camps, while the Mozambican liberation movement, FRELIMO, advocated for the opposite. It argues the Tanzanian state preferred nationalist staff over expatriates due to governmental presumptions that African staff could better monitor refugee daily life – and identify subversive activity – than expatriates could. This put the Tanzanian state at a crossroads with FRELIMO, while humanitarian agencies often found themselves caught between the two agendas.

The “logic” of Renamo civil war violence: Trans-border communities and Renamo incursions in Eastern Zimbabwe, 1980s-1992.

This study investigates the dynamics of civil war violence by Renamo forces among trans-border communities in Honde Valley from the early 1980s to 1992 when the Mozambican Civil War ended. In its venture to understand reasons given by ordinary people in Honde Valley for forging relationships with Renamo, this article does not seek to dismiss but to make sense of the violence. The article analyses the targets of violence to determine whether there was a switchfrom indiscriminate to selective violence or vice versa. Through adding another stratum of analysis to this discussion of wartime relationships, this study discusses violence in the context of Renamo’s relations with foreign civilians and Mozambican refugees living in a country whose official international policy was anti-Renamo. It concludes that the relationship between the Honde Valley people and Renamo forces was complicated and sometimes qualified as “being with” Renamo, at times “being with” the Zimbabwe security forces and at yet other times as non-aligned. By examining this dimension of the relationship, this article does not seek to sanitise the acts of banditry, looting and killing by the Renamo units, but to expose currently silenced micro-narratives of the incursions in the Honde Valley.

Assessing Changes in Household Socioeconomic Status in Rural South Africa, 2001\u20132013: A Distributional Analysis Using Household Asset Indicators

Understanding the distribution of socioeconomic status (SES) and its temporal dynamics within a population is critical to ensure that policies and interventions adequately and equitably contribute to the well-being and life chances of all individuals. This study assesses the dynamics of SES in a typical rural South African setting over the period 2001–2013 using data on household assets from the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System. Three SES indices, an absolute index, principal component analysis index and multiple correspondence analysis index, are constructed from the household asset indicators. Relative distribution methods are then applied to the indices to assess changes over time in the distribution of SES with special focus on location and shape shifts. Results show that the proportion of households that own assets associated with greater modern wealth has substantially increased over time. In addition, relative distributions in all three indices show that the median SES index value has shifted up and the distribution has become less polarized and is converging towards the middle. However, the convergence is larger from the upper tail than from the lower tail, which suggests that the improvement in SES has been slower for poorer households. The results also show persistent ethnic differences in SES with households of former Mozambican refugees being at a disadvantage. From a methodological perspective, the study findings demonstrate the comparability of the easy-to-compute absolute index to other SES indices constructed using more advanced statistical techniques in assessing household SES.

(Dis)(em)placing gender at Ukwimi: refugee resettlement and repatriation in eastern Zambia

There is growing recognition within feminist scholarship that managing displacement is a highly contested, politicized, and gendered process. This article seeks to contribute by demonstrating that the processes of resettlement and repatriation (both thought of as ‘solutions’ to displacement) are also contested, politicized, and gendered. My analysis is situated within feminist geopolitics and includes empirical data collected from interviews with and observations of Mozambican/Angolan refugees, their hosts, and institutional actors at Ukwimi Refugee Settlement (URS), Zambia. Specifically, the discussion focuses on two realities. First, that resettlement to formal, organized settlements (like URS) actively displaces gender dynamics, as illustrated by the case of Mozambican refugees resettled to URS. Second, that large-scale, organized repatriation also displaces gender relationships in profound ways, as demonstrated by the large-scale repatriation of Angolan refugees from URS. In the midst of multiple displacements, the daily (and highly gendered) struggles of people at URS reflect the concrete ways in which refugees and their hosts actively seek to emplace themselves at URS.

Exploring the impact of the 2008 global food crisis on food security among vulnerable households in rural South Africa.

Recurring food crises endanger the livelihoods of millions of households in developing countries around the globe. Owing to the importance of this issue, we explore recent changes in food security between the years 2004 and 2010 in a rural district in Northeastern South Africa. Our study window spans the time of the 2008 global food crises and allows the investigation of its impacts on rural South African populations. Grounded in the sustainable livelihood framework, we examine differences in food security trajectories among vulnerable sub populations. A unique panel data set of 8,147 households, provided by the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System (Agincourt HDSS), allows us to employ a longitudinal multilevel modeling approach to estimate adjusted growth curves for the differential change in food security across time. We observe an overall improvement in food security that leveled off after 2008, most likely resulting from the global food crisis. In addition, we discover significant differences in food security trajectories for various sub populations. For example, female-headed households and those living in areas with better access to natural resources differentially improved their food security situation, compared to male-headed households and those households with lower levels of natural resource access. However, former Mozambican refugees witnessed a decline in food security. Therefore, poverty alleviation programs for the Agincourt region should work to improve the food security of vulnerable households, such as former Mozambican refugees.

Building a revolutionary constituency: Mozambican refugees and the development of the FRELIMO proto-state, 1964–1968

During the early 1960s, many Mozambicans fled from the northern provinces of Cabo Delgado and Niassa to the sanctuary and friendly border of Tanganyika (Tanzania) to escape the escalating violence of the anti-colonial war. These Mozambicans experienced, like many political refugees, a crisis of status during this migration. In seeking to survive their migration to Tanzania, many existing social relations among Mozambican refugees were temporarily suspended during this transit. Under the auspices of FRELIMO1 and the Tanzanian authorities, Mozambican refugees often found that their opportunities during this social breakdown were usually limited and redirected for the purposes of winning the anti-colonial war. Many of these people, regardless of gender or age, were also socially transformed by a continuum of survival skills that I call the bio-social experience. Many Mozambican refugees opted to work with FRELIMO as products of their own individual bio-social experiences. With the assistance of this revolutionary constituency of Mozambican refugees, FRELIMO’s institutional strategies and infrastructure projects inside Tanzania and in northern Mozambique offered an opportunity to demonstrate its early proto-state hegemony and revolutionary Pragmatism.

Convergence in fertility of South Africans and Mozambicans in rural South Africa, 1993–2009

Background: Although there are significant numbers of people displaced by war in Africa, very little is known about long-term changes in the fertility of refugees. Refugees of the Mozambican civil war (1977–1992) settled in many neighbouring countries, including South Africa. A large number of Mozambican refugees settled within the Agincourt sub-district, underpinned by a Health and Socio-demographic Surveillance Site (AHDSS), established in 1992, and have remained there. The AHDSS data provide a unique opportunity to study changes in fertility over time and the role that the fertility of self-settled refugee populations plays in the overall fertility level of the host community, a highly relevant factor in many areas of sub-Saharan Africa.Objectives: To examine the change in fertility of former Mozambican self-settled refugees over a period of 16 years and to compare the overall fertility and fertility patterns of Mozambicans to host South Africans.Design: Prospective data from the AHDSS on births from 1993 to 2009 were used to compare fertility trends and patterns and to examine socio-economic factors that may be associated with fertility change.Results: There has been a sharp decline in fertility in the Mozambican population and convergence in fertility patterns of Mozambican and local South African women. The convergence of fertility patterns coincides with a convergence in other socio-economic factors.Conclusion: The fertility of Mozambicans has decreased significantly and Mozambicans are adopting the childbearing patterns of South African women. The decline in Mozambican fertility has occurred alongside socio-economic gains. There remains, however, high unemployment and endemic poverty in the area and fertility is not likely to decrease further without increased delivery of family planning to adolescents and increased education and job opportunities for women.

Rural Poverty Dynamics and Refugee Communities in South Africa: A Spatial–Temporal Model

The assimilation of refugees into their host community economic structures is often problematic. The paper investigates the ability of refugees in rural South Africa to accumulate assets over time relative to their host community. Bayesian spatial–temporal modelling was employed to analyse a longitudinal database that indicated that the asset accumulation rate of former Mozambican refugee households was similar to their host community; however, they were unable to close the wealth gap. A series of geo-statistical wealth maps illustrate that there is a spatial element to the higher levels of absolute poverty in the former refugee villages. The primary reason for this is their physical location in drier conditions that are established further away from facilities and infrastructure. Neighbouring South African villages in close proximity, however, display lower levels of absolute poverty, suggesting that the spatial location of the refugees only partially explains their disadvantaged situation. In this regard, the results indicate that the wealth of former refugee households continues to be more compromised by higher mortality levels, poorer education, and less access to high-return employment opportunities. The long-term impact of low initial asset status appears to be perpetuated in this instance by difficulties in obtaining legal status in order to access state pensions, facilities, and opportunities. The usefulness of the results is that they can be used to sharpen the targeting of differentiated policy in a given geographical area for refugee communities in rural Africa. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Survived infancy but still vulnerable: spatial-temporal trends and risk factors for child mortality in the Agincourt rural sub-district, South Africa, 1992-2007

Targeting of health interventions to poor children at highest risk of mortality are promising approaches for enhancing equity. Methods have emerged to accurately quantify excess risk and identify space-time disparities. This provides useful and detailed information for guiding policy. A spatio-temporal analysis was performed to identify risk factors associated with child (1-4 years) mortality in the Agincourt sub-district, South Africa, to assess temporal changes in child mortality patterns within the study site between 1992 and 2007, and to produce all-cause and cause-specific mortality maps to identify high risk areas. Demographic, maternal, paternal and fertility-related factors, household mortality experience, distance to health care facility and socio-economic status were among the examined risk factors. The analysis was carried out by fitting a Bayesian discrete time Bernoulli survival geostatistical model using Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation. Bayesian kriging was used to produce mortality risk maps. Significant temporal increase in child mortality was observed due to the HIV epidemic. A distinct spatial risk pattern was observed with higher risk areas being concentrated in poorer settlements on the eastern part of the study area, largely inhabited by former Mozambican refugees. The major risk factors for childhood mortality, following multivariate adjustment, were mother's death (especially when due to HIV and tuberculosis), greater number of children under 5 years living in the same household and winter season. This study demonstrates the use of Bayesian geostatistical models for accurately quantifying risk factors and producing maps of child mortality risk in a health and demographic surveillance system. According to the space-time analysis, the southeast and upper central regions of the site appear to have the highest mortality risk. The results inform policies to address health inequalities in the Agincourt sub-district and to improve access to health services. Targeted efforts to prevent vertical transmission of HIV in specific settings need to be undertaken as well as ensuring the survival of the mother and father in childhood.

Portuguese Immigrant History in Twentieth Century South Africa: A Preliminary Overview

South Africans of Portuguese descent probably constitute ten to fifteen per cent of the white South African population. Yet it is a remarkably under-researched population. This article attempts to lay out a research agenda to address this large historiographical gap. It begins with an overview of the sparse literature on Portuguese immigrants and then provides a basic narrative of three discernible waves of migration from the late nineteenth century until the late 1970s. The first and longest wave involved impoverished citizens of the island of Madeira. The second involved more skilled mainlanders from about 1940–1980, most coming in the 1960s and 1970s. The final wave involved Mozambican and Angolan ex-colonial refugees. The paper suggest several areas of possible historical research on Portuguese-South Africans: the degree of their coherence as a “community”; their generational continuity and discontinuity; and in general, the nature of transnational hybridised identity in its racial, religious and political dimensions.

Space and time clustering of mortality in rural South Africa (Agincourt HDSS), 1992–2007

Background: Detailed information regarding the spatial and/or spatial–temporal distribution of mortality is required for the efficient implementation and targeting of public health interventions.Objectives: Identify high risk clusters of mortality within the Agincourt subdistrict for targeting of public health interventions, and highlight areas for further research.Design: Mortality data were extracted from the Agincourt health and socio-demographic surveillance system (HDSS) for the period 1992–2007. Mortality rates by age group and time were calculated assuming a Poisson distribution and using precise person-time contribution estimates. A spatial scan statistic (Kulldorff) was used to test for clusters of age group specific all-cause and cause-specific mortality both in space and time.Results: Many statistically significant clusters of higher all-cause and cause-specific mortality were identified both in space and time. Specific areas were consistently identified as high risk areas; namely, the east/south- east and upper east central regions. This corresponds to areas with higher mortality due to communicable causes (especially HIV/TB and diarrhoeal disease) and indicates a non-random element to the distribution of potential underlying causative factors e.g. settlements comprising former Mozambican refugees in east/south-east of the site, corresponding higher poverty areas, South African villages with higher HIV prevalence, etc. Clusters of older adult mortality were also observed indicating potential non-random distribution of non-communicable disease mortality.Conclusion: This study has highlighted distinct clusters of all-cause and cause-specific mortality within the Agincourt subdistrict. It is a first step in prioritizing areas for further, more detailed research as well as for future public health follow-on efforts such as targeting of vertical prevention of HIV/TB and antiretroviral rollout in significant child and adult mortality clusters; and assessment and provision of adequate water and sanitation in the child mortality clusters particularly in south-east where diarrheal mortality appears high. Underlying causative factors need to be identified and accurately quantified. Other questions for more detailed research are discussed.

Invisible Integration: How Bureaucratic, Academic and Social Categories Obscure Integrated Refugees

This paper shows how successfully integrated refugees are often made invisible to institutions, academics and within social contexts. It argues that certain elements of social and institutional categorization processes—including partiality, functionality, conflation, immutability, self-confirmation and negotiability— tend to obscure people who are integrated. The paper presents a case study which juxtaposes the ways in which three different kinds of categorization have been applied to people of Mozambican birth who settled in a rural South African border area after fleeing the Mozambican civil war in the 1980s. The three cases of categorization come from the South African government for the purpose of legal regularization; from an academic unit of the University of the Witwatersrand for the purpose of demographic and public health research; and from residents of Bushbuckridge District to describe and manage their relationships with each other. The paper demonstrates how each of these different perspectives obscures the experiences of integrated Mozambican refugees.

The Faint Footprint of Man: Representing Race, Place and Conservation on the Mozambique-South Africa Borderland

The integration of South Africa's existing Kruger National Park with Mozambique's newly-established Limpopo National Park signified an important milestone in the development of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park. Marketed as an example of the African Renaissance-in-action, this move towards a transnational ‘mega-park’ has promised an enlightened approach to conservation and regional economic development. For Mozambique, the LNP is a highly visible post-war initiative, attracting much needed investment to a remote and under-developed part of the country. This article addresses the tensions created around people living within this new Park and considers how these tensions contribute towards shaping the LNP as a space of conservation. Specifically, it contrasts an official programme to promote ‘voluntary resettlement’ from the LNP—which represents local ‘communities’ not only as incompatible with the interests and intentions of conservation but also as fundamentally separable from it—with more historically entrenched local experiences and narratives of conservation. These narratives, drawn primarily from Mozambican migrants and refugees in South Africa, represent livelihoods and lifeworlds as intimately enmeshed in the historical development of conservation on the borderland. Relentless Mozambican intrusions into the KNP over more than a century asserted their place on this conservation landscape, albeit on terms that were profoundly alienating and marginalizing. The article argues that contested representations over belonging within this unfolding conservation regime are likely to reproduce local understandings of conservation in terms of continuities of racial politics and colonial expansion.

International Migration Management and Development in Mozambique: What Strategies?

AbstractMigration management has become a complex issue for managers since there are a growing number of people who voluntarily or forcibly leave their places of origin for new places. Maintaining a satisfactory migration policy that could respond to all interests is a real challenge. Just as the Mozambican government is still battling with the management of its own migrants who are daily crossing national and regional borders, there are also a growing number of refugees from the Great Lakes of Africa and a movement of Malawians into the country in search of land and forest resources. This movement of immigrants is a response to the environmental degradation caused by Mozambican refugees from the time of their exile during the civil war. At the same time, there is a trend of emigration as a result of poor economic conditions and the increase of poverty in rural areas. It is also clear that there are direct and indirect gains and losses resulting from migration in and out of Mozambique. To what extent have policymakers dealt with these moving “outs” and “ins”? This paper seeks to analyse migration management and development strategies in Mozambique, as well as the challenges that policymakers have exposed, and also highlights the role of Mozambican refugees on environmental degradation caused in Malawi.

Reframing vulnerability: Mozambican refugees' access to state-funded pensions in rural South Africa.

Researchers at the South African Medical Research Council/University of the Witwatersrand Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt) fieldsite in rural South Africa consider Mozambican residents more vulnerable than others in the local population. These self-settled refugees, many of whom are still not South African citizens, primarily came to South Africa in the 1980s during the Mozambican Civil War. This perceived economic vulnerability is rooted in their difficulties in accessing social grants, until recently legally available only to those with South African citizenship documentation. This paper focuses on semi-structured interviews with 30 'older' women of Mozambican-descent living in the Agincourt area. These interviews highlight three important aspects of vulnerability; the respondents: (1) perceive a risk of deportation despite their having lived in the country for 20 years, (2) are unable to easily access social grants, namely the state-funded old-age pension, and (3) struggle to make ends meet when faced with daily needs and crisis situations. All three of these vulnerabilities were mediated to some extent by these women's resourcefulness. They generated ties to South Africa through obtaining identification-documents, used these documents to access pensions, and used the pensions to help them sustain their multigenerational households.

Invisible Integration: How Bureaucratic, Academic and Social Categories Obscure Integrated Refugees

This paper shows how successfully integrated refugees are often made invisible to institutions, academics and within social contexts. It argues that certain elements of social and institutional categorization processes—including partiality, functionality, conflation, immutability, self-confirmation and negotiability—tend to obscure people who are integrated. The paper presents a case study which juxtaposes the ways in which three different kinds of categorization have been applied to people of Mozambican birth who settled in a rural South African border area after fleeing the Mozambican civil war in the 1980s. The three cases of categorization come from the South African government for the purpose of legal regularization; from an academic unit of the University of the Witwatersrand for the purpose of demographic and public health research; and from residents of Bushbuckridge District to describe and manage their relationships with each other. The paper demonstrates how each of these different perspectives obscures the experiences of integrated Mozambican refugees.

From enslavement to environmentalism: politics on a Southern African frontier

Review: From Enslavement to Environmentalism: Politics on a Southern African Frontier By David McDermott Hughes Reviewed by Bram Buscher Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands David McDermott Hughes. From Enslavement to Environmentalism. Politics on a Southern African Frontier. Seattle: University of Washington Press, May 2006. 288 pp. (hardbound) ISBN: 0-295-98590-9. (90% Recycled, Acid-free paper) US$50.00. Within the vast and burgeoning literature on community-based conservation in Africa, David Hughes’ From Enslavement to Environmentalism is a welcome addition. With great care, Hughes narrates what life is like in and around two villages on the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique and shows how outside interventions have over time greatly changed local power dynamics in relation to land and people. But these dynamics differed greatly between the two countries. Interestingly, the book challenges the assumption in much of the literature that African borders are “soft” -- not very meaningful to local people. Instead, the book argues that the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe is “hard” in that “people cross it, but emigration strips at least some people of rights and securities they regularly enjoy at home” (p. 76). This especially concerned Mozambican refugees, crossing the border to flee from civil war, subsequently finding themselves as “pegs” in turf-wars over land between local headmen, the state and private owners in a country “steeped in cadastral culture” (p. 123). In turn, however, the cadastral politics so characteristic of Zimbabwe increasingly started influencing local politics in Mozambique during the 1990s. Although traditionally more so in former British colonies, Hughes contends that due to conservation and private sector interventions even Mozambique has been making a “sea change” from “rule based on categories of people to rule based on the management of zones of land” (p. 145). And he states that this shift “from enslavement to environmentalism” has not brought more security or prospects for people living in rural Mozambique. In fact, the book suggests that neoliberal “community-based” conservation and tourism projects have made people worse off than they were before. The strong point of the book is the ethnographic detail Hughes brings to bear to embed and “ground” the above two arguments. Yet, what the book wins in ethnographic detail, it seems to lose in theoretical rigor, especially when it concerns the operationalization of liberalism and politics. In itself

Adapting to Changing Legal Frameworks: Mozambican Refugees in South Africa

This paper argues that legal frameworks to manage immigration and refugee rights need to be understood from below, namely, how they are interpreted and used locally by the immigrants affected and by the host communities, in their specific historical context. Using the case of Mozambican refugees in South Africa (1985-2006), the paper outlines why many of the policies targeted at or affecting this group of immigrants have had counterproductive effects (from the perspective of policy makers) because of the disjuncture between the goals and assumptions of the legal framework and the reality experienced and desired by the refugees. The situation of Mozambican refugees in South Africa over the past twenty years has been shaped by a radically changing legal context. These changes are charted and matched with how Mozambican refugees, especially those settled in the rural border areas, have adapted to, made use of and subverted the various legal constraints and opportunities provided by the South African state and its local representatives.

From Enslavement to Environmentalism: Politics on a Southern African Frontier

Review: From Enslavement to Environmentalism: Politics on a Southern African Frontier By David McDermott Hughes Reviewed by Bram Buscher Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands David McDermott Hughes. From Enslavement to Environmentalism. Politics on a Southern African Frontier. Seattle: University of Washington Press, May 2006. 288 pp. (hardbound) ISBN: 0-295-98590-9. (90% Recycled, Acid-free paper) US$50.00. Within the vast and burgeoning literature on community-based conservation in Africa, David Hughes’ From Enslavement to Environmentalism is a welcome addition. With great care, Hughes narrates what life is like in and around two villages on the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique and shows how outside interventions have over time greatly changed local power dynamics in relation to land and people. But these dynamics differed greatly between the two countries. Interestingly, the book challenges the assumption in much of the literature that African borders are “soft” -- not very meaningful to local people. Instead, the book argues that the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe is “hard” in that “people cross it, but emigration strips at least some people of rights and securities they regularly enjoy at home” (p. 76). This especially concerned Mozambican refugees, crossing the border to flee from civil war, subsequently finding themselves as “pegs” in turf-wars over land between local headmen, the state and private owners in a country “steeped in cadastral culture” (p. 123). In turn, however, the cadastral politics so characteristic of Zimbabwe increasingly started influencing local politics in Mozambique during the 1990s. Although traditionally more so in former British colonies, Hughes contends that due to conservation and private sector interventions even Mozambique has been making a “sea change” from “rule based on categories of people to rule based on the management of zones of land” (p. 145). And he states that this shift “from enslavement to environmentalism” has not brought more security or prospects for people living in rural Mozambique. In fact, the book suggests that neoliberal “community-based” conservation and tourism projects have made people worse off than they were before. The strong point of the book is the ethnographic detail Hughes brings to bear to embed and “ground” the above two arguments. Yet, what the book wins in ethnographic detail, it seems to lose in theoretical rigor, especially when it concerns the operationalization of liberalism and politics. In itself

Childhood mortality among former Mozambican refugees and their hosts in rural South Africa.

It is important to monitor health differentials between population groups to understand how they are generated. Internationally displaced people represent one potentially disadvantaged group. We investigated differentials in mortality between children from former Mozambican refugee and host South African households in a rural sub-district in the north-east of South Africa. Open prospective cohort of 30 276 children (80 462 person years of follow-up) followed from 1 January 1992 to 31 October 2000 in Limpopo Province, South Africa. Exposure and outcomes data came from the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System (DSS). There was no difference in infant mortality between children from former Mozambican refugee households and those from South African homes (adjusted rate ratio [RR] = 1.02, 95% CI: 0.79, 1.32), but mortality levels were higher among former Mozambican refugee children during the next 4 years (adjusted RR = 1.91, 95% CI: 1.50, 2.42). Increased mortality levels were also seen among children from larger households and whose mother died, while children born to mothers aged >40 years or with higher education were at lower risk. Measured maternal, household, and health service utilization characteristics could not explain the difference in mortality between children from former Mozambican refugee and South African households. Former Mozambican refugee children residing in refugee settlements had higher mortality rates than those residing in more established villages. This study demonstrates higher childhood, but not infant, mortality rates among children from former Mozambican refugee households compared with those from host South African households in rural South Africa. The lack of legal status and lower wealth of many former Mozambican refugees may partly explain this disparity.