Social Security, Urbanization and Migration in Malawi

Statutory social security institutions developing countries are only marginally developed and only confined to those working in the formal sector economy. Most people rely on the so-called `informal` or `traditional` social security institutions and strategies to cope with their insecurities. This holds especially for the urban areas. Migration is a social security strategy to cope with insecurities in the place of origin. At the same time, migration and urbanisation are the source of many new ones. Urban migrants usually depend upon a so-called `social security mix. Encompassing `formal`, `informal` and `traditional` social security institutions and relations, it also extends beyond the urban space, linking urban and rural household. This research that is based on a prior fieldwork carried out in 1998 in an urban fringe area in Lilongwe City, Malawi, aims at investigating the changes these social security strategies are undergoing in the course of migration and urbanisation processes. It is argued that the understanding of social security as a dynamic process that is reproducing, adapting, transforming with migration, urbanisation and other socio-economic changes, is important for an adequate understanding of the functioning and operation of urban social security.

Social security and social policy have gained increasing importance in development research and politics over the last decades as part of a renewed attention to the social dimension of development. Within the overall framework of poverty alleviation and the UN-promoted Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), new forms and measures of social security are discussed and promoted. These new measures are strongly based on so-called `non-state` informal and traditional social security measures, such as familial, communal or associational religious or cultural networks. While these networks play an important role as regards social security in developing countries, this study argues that political and analytical approaches to social security are however, still far too narrow as to capture the complex social, economic realities in most countries. Analysing social security from a viewpoint that reaches beyond its notion as an analytical concept related to the welfare state, this case study of social security strategies of urban migrants in a fringe area of Lilongwe City (Malawi) reveals that social security in developing countries is a patchwork of mechanisms linked to and embedded in a variety of social, economic, political, cultural or legal contexts and conditions. This complex multi-layered web does not only encompass `formal`, `informal` and `traditional` socials security mechanisms, but extends far into space, linking the `urban` and `rural`, but also the local and the global level. Observing migrants` networks over a period of three years, the study makes clear that social and economic relations and support mechanisms are not static, but in a constant process of re-organisation and re- definition, shifting between different actors, needs and insecurities, responding to changing social, economic or political - local and global - contexts and conditions. Following a multi-sited research approach that includes both the classical `field` of anthropological research and the policy field and analysing social security against the actual social practice, the study reveals that rising poverty rates and the HIV/Aids epidemic render social security networks increasingly fragile and contingent, decreasing significantly their material and social care potential. While they are still incredibly flexible in dealing with changing living conditions, adapting to changing social and economic conditions, their `bargaining space` is diminishing significantly. Against the background of a social policy that increasingly focuses on the `social capital` of these networks, the study shows that they are largely too fragile to cope with worsening living conditions, let alone provide for an adequate social security.