Surviving on the Margins of the Formal Employment, an Analysis of the Life Experiences of Pensioners in Masvingo Zimbabwe

Without purporting to be a meta-representation of the life experiences of pensioners in Zimbabwe, this ethnographic study reflects on the challenges bedeviling pensioners, using Masvingo urban as the case study. The study therefore examines the challenges faced by the pensioners in Masvingo, simultaneously analyzing the survival strategies adopted by these pensioners to improve their strained livelihoods. The central argument is that the current macro-economic challenges in Zimbabwe have led to a huge strain on the livelihoods of the pensioners as well as economic marginalization, leaving them in a state of abjection, where they are struggling to meet life’s basics such as heath, food clothing and transport requirements. Notwithstanding the constraining effects of the said economic challenges, the treatise opines that these social actors have an avalanche of livelihood assets which they exude as calculative, strategic, rational and reflexive actors to deal with their constraining social environment. The study was grounded in qualitative methodology and unstructured interviews and focus group discussion were used as the main data soliciting techniques. Giddens’ Stracturation thesis and the Sustainable Livelihood Framework were used as the analytical lens for the findings made herein.