Zimbabwe Emigration and Immigration

Zimbabwe Wiki Topics
Flag of Zimbabwe.svg.png
Beginning Research
Record Types
Country Background
Local Research Resources

Online Sources

British Overseas Subjects

Zimbabwe Emigration and Immigration

"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country.
Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Finding the Town of Origin in Zimbabwe

If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in Zimbabwe, see Zimbabwe Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

Immigration into Zimbabwe

  • The Kingdom of Mapungubwe was the first in a series of trading states which had developed in Zimbabwe by the time the first European explorers arrived from Portugal. These states traded gold, ivory, and copper for cloth and glass.
  • From about 1300 until 1600 the Kingdom of Zimbabwe eclipsed Mapungubwe.
  • From c. 1450 to 1760 Zimbabwe gave way to the Kingdom of Mutapa. This Shona state ruled much of the area of present-day Zimbabwe, plus parts of central Mozambique.
  • It was renowned for its strategic trade routes with the Arabs and Portugal. The Portuguese sought to monopolize this influence and began a series of wars which left the empire in near collapse in the early 17th century.
  • As a direct response to increased European presence in the interior a new Shona state emerged, known as the Rozwi Empire which expelled the Portuguese from the Zimbabwean plateau.
  • By 1838, the Ndebele clan had conquered the Rozwi Empire, along with the other smaller Shona states, and reduced them to vassaldom.
  • In the 1880s, European colonists arrived with Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company . In 1888. Rhodes obtained a concession for mining rights from King Lobengula of the Ndebele peoples.
  • Rhodes used this document in 1890 to use military action to justify establishing company rule over the area.
  • In 1895, the BSAC adopted the name "Rhodesia" for the territory. In 1898, "Southern Rhodesia" became the official name for the region south of the Zambezi, which later adopted the name "Zimbabwe".

Emigration From Zimbabwe

KNOMAD Statistics: Emigrants: 973,200. Top destination countries: South Africa, the United Kingdom, Malawi, Australia, Botswana, Mozambique, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Zambia[1]

Records of Zimbabwe Emigrants in Their Destination Nations

Dark thin font green pin Version 4.png One option is to look for records about the ancestor in the country of destination, the country they immigrated into. See links to immigration records for major destination countries below.

South Africa, the United Kingdom, Malawi, Australia, Botswana, Mozambique, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Zambia

References

  1. "Zimbabwe", at KNOMAD, the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development, https://www.knomad.org/data/migration/emigration?page=26, accessed 2 August 2021.