Description
It has been argued that resilience and covert and overt resistance have become essential for informal sector actors to withstand challenging economic and political conditions in urban Zimbabwe’s informal sector (Moyo, 2018; Musoni, 2010). I suggest that adaptive resistance and non-neoliberal resilience became primary mechanisms for survival in the informal sector. ‘Adaptive’ refers to the ability to use personal characteristics and networks to mitigate adverse circumstances, and ‘resistance’ implies the refusal to comply with the livelihood-threatening approaches of the authorities. Adaptive resistance acquired several dimensions – economic, political, spatial, gender, and age. Women in Harare’s informal sector successfully devised multidimensional adaptive resistance strategies by diversifying their income streams, navigating the political patronage networks, and using the physical space around them to earn an income. Their adaptive resistance, however, is different from the neoliberal concept of resilience which focuses on ‘individual responsibility’ (Joseph, 2013) as it is aimed at their survival and fight for a livelihood in adverse economic and political conditions. Adaptive resistance should be seen as a survival strategy and not a manifestation of neoliberalism as women in the informal sector expect a meaningful and positive return of the state into their lives.
