The MiFOOD Network and the Remitting for Resilience (R2) project hosted a seminar on July 10, 2026, with R2 project partner Professor Tim Brown from Queen Mary University of London, who presented early findings from the project’s field research in Zimbabwe.
Titled “Remitting for Resilience (R2): Report from Zimbabwe,” the seminar focused on formal and informal remittance practices among migrants in Zimbabwe. Drawing on data primarily collected from 450 surveys conducted in Epworth, Masvingo and Mutare, as well as semi-structured interviews, Prof. Brown offered rich reflections on how migrants send remittances, why they choose particular sending practices, and how different channels are used across the three research sites. The presentation also explored whether, and how, climate-related shocks influence remittance behaviours. Prof. Brown highlighted similarities and differences between the three Zimbabwean sites, with particular attention to the gendered dimensions of internal migration and sending practices.
The seminar contributed to the R2 project’s broader effort to understand how remittances support resilience in contexts shaped by migration, food insecurity, economic precarity and climate stress. It also provided an important opportunity for cross-discussion and knowledge exchange among R2 researchers working across different migration and remittance corridors. The discussion helped identify shared themes, context-specific differences and potential comparative questions across corridors. These exchanges will support the development of comparative research outputs in the near future, strengthening the R2 project’s broader analysis of how remittances contribute to resilience in diverse migration contexts.
Prof. Brown is Professor of Global Health Geography in the Department of Geography and Environmental Science at Queen Mary University of London. Since 2017, he has contributed to an extensive programme of interdisciplinary research on child undernutrition, food insecurity, migration and mobility in southern Africa. His work brings together critical health geography, public health, food security and migration studies to better understand how people navigate complex social, economic and environmental challenges.