Living a Mzungu Life: The Livelihood Implications of Remittance Investments in Mzuzu, Malawi

Urban informal settlements in rapidly expanding cities of the global south are often inhabited by rural migrants seeking better livelihood opportunities. Within the migration and development nexus, limited attention has been given to how remittances from migrant workers – who continue to have irregular status in their destination countries – shape the living conditions of families living in these precarious urban spaces. In particular, the interactions between remittance use and the housing, education and socio-economic well-being of marginalised urban migrant-sending households remain underexplored. Understanding these connections is crucial, as informal settlements reflect evolving forms of urban precarity shaped by transnational remittance flows and global migration processes. Drawing on qualitative research methods and the theoretical lens of the New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM) approach, this article addresses this gap through a qualitative case study of Mzuzu, Malawi. The analysis is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted by the lead author in Mzuzu in 2018 with 42 migrant household representatives, complemented by interviews with ten returnee migrants and 37 key informants. The findings indicate that migration and remittances have had noticeable impacts on the quality of the living conditions of receiving households. However, given the inherent precarity associated with irregular migration, livelihood vulnerabilities for migrant-sending households who depend on remittances could still exist, as the overall change might only be for the short term. The article also underscores the importance of housing investments in ensuring the quality of living conditions in urban low-income contexts.