AFRICAN SOCIETY TODA Y Migrant Laborers Migrant Laborers surveys the large Iiterature on Iabor migration in east, west and southern Africa and interprets it from a political economy perspective. lt addresses the controversies as to the origins of migrancy and its effects on the rural economy, emphasizing the differences in the response of various African pre-capitalist societies to wage Iabor, and the regional variations in the effects on the rural economy and on the division of Iabor wirhin the rural household. Male migrants' experiences with forced Iabor, recruitment systems, advance payments and compound controls are described, and the rather different character of women's migratio:-~ is examined. A centrat concern is the development of migrant workers' conscious ness and forms of resistance. Under what conditions are the Iabor-marker divisions between migrant and non-migram workers overcome? When do migrants move beyond strategies of desertion and Iabor mobiliry to collective on-site work actions such as strikes and unionism? Labor protest among dockers, miners and domestic workers is examined with respect to these questions. Finally, the persistence of migrancy in South Africa today is contrasred to the decline of Iabor migrancy in other parts of the continent. AFRICAN SOCIETY TODA Y Genera/editor: ROBIN COHEN Advisory editors: 0. Aribiah, Jean Copans, Paul Lubeck, Philip M. Mbithi, M. S. Muntemba, 0. Nnoli, Richard Sandbrook The series has been designed to provide scholarly, but lively and up-to date, books, likely to appeal to a wide readership. The authors will be drawn from the field of development studies and all the social sciences, and will also have had experience of teaching and research in a nurober of African countries. The books will deal with the various social groups and classes that comprise contemporary African society and successive volumes willlink with previous volumes to create an int(grated and comprehensive picture of the African social structure. Also in the series Farm labour. KEN SWINDELL The politics of Africa's economic Stagnation. RICHARD SANDBROOK MI GRANT LABORERS SHARON STICHTER n,,. ngltr o{ rht· Um~crs1t\ of Cambrtdg.c IO prm/ (./IId .1('1/ ull man11cr o( hoo/... 1 l•ut grunrnl /'11 Ht'llfl ~111," 15]4 Th,· L•nncrsllr ha.1 rrmr,·d and publuhed collfrii!IIWJI_\ smcc 1584 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge London New York New Rochelle Melbourne Sydney Published by rhe Press Syndicate of rhe University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpingron Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP 32 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022, USA 10 Stamförd Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1985 First published 1985 Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge Library of Congress catalogue card number: 85-4098 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Stichter, Sharon Migrant laborers. - (African society today) r. Migrant Iabor - Africa I. Tide li. Series 331·5'44'096 HDs8s6.A/ ISBN o 521 25II8 4 hard covers ISBN o 521 27213 opaperback _ ,., ..... ·····'"'·1)_,-.~:f'l~l • 11.:~.!..,.&.•!.'.•1.!.-:.~.:~.u. ... ,.-;.::.~ .• .. teet,ttallel\ u /11 i-!f F; ~ I SE CONTENTS I Migration and development page I 2 Migrants and the rural economy 29 3 Migration and the African hausehold 58 4 Entering and leaving the work force 88 5 Migrants at the work place I20 6 Warnen as migrants and workers I44 7 Migrants, protest and the future I79 Notes I96 Index 22I V MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT Circular Iabor migration is not unique to Africa, yet it has been one of the most distinctive featuresofthat continent's development. To understand it, we must grasp not only its general function in early capitalist development, but also those characteristics of Africa which have made it so com mon a pattern there. Temporary Iabor migrants shuttle between two different modes of production, capitalist wage employment on the one hand, and some form of pre- or partially capitalist subsistence or peasant production on the other. Returnmigration is a phenomenon of the incomplete separation of the worker from his or her means of production. Temporary participation in the Iabor market involving spatial movement has been common in all parts of the world during early industrial development. Russian Iords pro vided serfs for the textile factories in Moscow in the eight eenth century, allowing them to migrate on a temporary basis.1 Chinese Iabor contractors brought hundreds of vil lagers to the coal- and salt-mines for specified periods of time in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.2 Return migration has been important in other parts of Asia andin Latin America.3 But, as development, whether capitalist or socialist, proceeds, circulatory Iabor migration tends to decline. From a comparative perspective, the reason that return migration remains so prevalent in Africa has to do Migrant laborers in Africa 2 with the Iack of industrial development. Only one coumry, South Africa, has successfully industrialized on the basis of enforced migrancy. In other areas of Africa the low Ievel of industrial devel opment still makes it possible for ~any enterprises to rely on cheap, less skilled and less stabthzed Iabor. At the same time, the Iack of penetration of capital into agriculture has left small-scale peasant and subsistence farming and herding as attainable, although materially not very satisfac tory, options for the majority of the population. But when explaining the origins of the migrancy system, as distinct from its continuance, there is reason to argue that condi tions specific to African pre-colonial social formations themselves, in addition to external forces, contributed to determining that migrancy would be the predominant form of wage Iabor for the first half-century of capitalist development. APPROACHES TOMIGRANTS The term 'migrant laborer' encompasses a range of patterns of participation in the Iabor force, but at the same time specifically excludes several other types of migration. More or less permanent migration of whole kin groups has been common in Africa for centuries; movements were often undertaken out of economic necessity, for example to con trol trade routes or to get access to fertile land for cultivation or grazing. In fact, it was the colonial authorities who by and !arge attempted to curb these movements, the official view being that Africans ought to have a permanent rural home, to which the male could be returned after temporary migration for wage Iabor, and which could support his family. Forthis reason forms of migrationsuch as the seasonal movement of pastoralists were discouraged under colonial rule. Migration and development A modern version of pre-colonial migration has been brought about by the successful development of African grown cash crops in some areas, resulting in in-migration. Immigrantsoften come first as laborers in a typical migrant pattern, but then establish themselves as independent pro ducers and bring in their families. The cotton- and coffee growing areas of Buganda, the cocoa-producing areas of Ghana, and the palm-oil producing areas of Nigeria are, or have been, areas of extensive in-migration. In 1948, for example, one-third of the population of Buganda consisted of migrants from other parts of Uganda, or from T anzania, Sudan or Rwanda.4 This volume does not deal with these kinds of migration, but focusses exclusively on the temporary migration of individuals into and out of wage employment. We use the term 'Iabor migrant' to refer specifically to a person who moves between wage work and some other mode of produc tion, over some spatial distance. We do not include those who migrate in order to engage in trade, farming or other self-employment, nor do we include an individual who, upon leaving wage employment, is completely without an income; he or she must have some alternative way of getting an income, usually in the peasant or subsistence economy. In theory, one might include those who, as is so typical in many Third World cities, move periodically between em ployment and urban self-employment, but this pattern usually does not involve much migration.5 Within these parameters, patterns of Iabor participation can vary widely, from the long-service clerk or miner who brings his family with him to town but still returns to the rural area without pension upon retirement, to the unskilled laborer who works only a few days or weeks before return ing home. Between these extremes are many variations, depending in the first instance on length of stay in the Iabor force. This is not equivalent to length of stay in a particular Migrant laborers in Africa 4 job; migrants such as thos~ to the central and . southern African copper- and gold-mmes often move from JOb to job or have periods of unemployment between jobs. For our purposes it is not job turnover but turnover between wage and non-wage work that is the key factor. Other important variations among workers stem from the distance traveled, whether long or short (each representing a different invest ment of time and resources), and the degree of dependence on wage work as opposed to other sources of income. Another crucial factor consists in the political-legal terms of the migrant's incorporation into the labor force: whether participation is in one way or another forced (as was common in the early colonial era) or is in some sense voluntary, and also the duration and terms of the contract. We return to the description of the various patterns of participation in Chapter 4· A final differentiating factor among workers is the kinds of familial and pre-capitalist social obligations the migrant is enmeshed in in his or her home area; these too have an impact on the pattern of work and the disposition of wages. They are more fully described in Cha pters 2 and 3. These considerations point to the need for understanding both the political-economic situation from which migrants come, which determines their decision to migrate, or forces them to do so, as weil as the situation which they enter as workers, which influences their actions as workers and determines, or in some cases forces, their decision to return home. In Chapters and 3 we look at the experiences of 2 migrants in the rural areas, and in Chapters 4, 5 and 6 we examine the migrant as worker. Throughout, we want to consider not only the question of out-migration, but also that of return migration, that is, the failure of the wage system to absorb workers on a permanent basis. And, most important, we want to examine what actions and reactions have been provoked by Africans' experiences as workers, other than simply their comings and goings. Too often the