Migration and Development in Guinea-Bissau a Political Economy
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Abreu, Alexandre José Germano de (2012) Migration and development in contemporary Guinea‐ Bissau: a political economy approach. PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/14243 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN CONTEMPORARY GUINEA-BISSAU: A POLITICAL ECONOMY APPROACH ALEXANDRE JOSÉ GERMANO DE ABREU Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD in Economics 2012 Department of Economics School of Oriental and African Studies University of London Declaration for PhD thesis I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the School of Oriental and African Studies concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. Signed: Date: June 28 th, 2012 2 Abstract This thesis addresses the issue of the linkages between migration and development, taking Guinea-Bissau – a small West African country with a long and multi-layered history of internal and international migration – as a country-level case-study. It adopts a structural, political-economic approach, whereby “development” is understood first and foremost as involving qualitative changes in social-productive relations (i.e. the extant combination of modes of production and its associated class structure). In a context like Guinea-Bissau, looking at the migration-development nexus from this perspective entails looking in particular at the relationships between migration and the processes of commodification and class formation in the agrarian space. The thesis is divided into two parts. Part I discusses the key theoretical foundations of the research and is divided into three chapters: theories of migration; theoretical perspectives on economic development and change; and theoretical approaches to the migration- development nexus. Then, Part II presents the case-study of Guinea-Bissau, including an introductory chapter on research methods; a macro-level analysis of migration and development in Guinea-Bissau based on secondary evidence; and two ‘nested’ village-level case-studies that assess and illustrate features and tendencies at the micro-level, based on primary data collected by the author. The latter include the results of a survey of 108 households, complemented by focus groups and semi-structured interviews, undertaken in Caiomete (a Manjaco village in Northern Guinea-Bissau) and Braima Sori (a Fula village in Eastern Guinea-Bissau). We conclude that Guinea-Bissau has been undergoing significant political-economic changes, not least in terms of the commodification of subsistence, but that significant obstacles remain in place preventing a fuller transition to the capitalist mode of production and subsequent expanded accumulation. Migration, while central to the livelihoods of many migrants, families and communities of origin, seems limited in its ability to overcome those obstacles and catalyse development in a more fundamental sense. 3 Table of contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 3 Table of contents ..................................................................................................................... 4 List of tables ............................................................................................................................. 7 List of figures ............................................................................................................................ 9 Acronyms and abbreviations ................................................................................................. 11 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ 12 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 16 1.1 Setting the scene ......................................................................................................... 16 1.2 Key issues and concepts .............................................................................................. 20 1.3 Outline of the thesis .................................................................................................... 26 PART I – THEORETICAL DEBATES ............................................................................................ 28 2. Migration and its determinants .................................................................................... 29 2.1 Early contributions ....................................................................................................... 29 2.2 The emergence of the neoclassical theory of migration ............................................. 30 2.3 Historical-structural approaches ................................................................................. 33 2.4 The New Economics of Labour Migration ................................................................... 38 2.5 The mobility transition approach ................................................................................ 40 2.6 Systems and network approaches ............................................................................... 44 2.7 Conclusion: towards a renewed historical-structural synthesis .................................. 47 3. Development and change ............................................................................................. 50 3.1 A birds-eye view of economic development theory.................................................... 51 3.1.1 Neoclassical growth theories ............................................................................... 51 3.1.2 Structuralist theories of economic development ................................................ 56 3.2 Marxist perspectives: modes of production and dependency .................................... 59 3.2.1 Historical materialism: the basics ........................................................................ 59 3.2.2 Competing neo-Marxist theories: Dependency theory and world-systems analysis .......................................................................................................................... 64 3.3 Transitions and articulations ....................................................................................... 66 3.4 Conclusions and additional considerations ................................................................. 71 4. Migration-development linkages .................................................................................. 77 4.1 Theoretical contributions on specific linkages ............................................................ 78 4.1.1 Out-migration and domestic labour supply ......................................................... 78 4.1.2 Remittances .......................................................................................................... 80 4.1.3 Other transnational impacts of the diaspora ....................................................... 82 4.1.4 Return migration .................................................................................................. 84 4.2 The migration-development nexus in the historical materialist conception of development...................................................................................................................... 85 Theoretical foundations: a recapitulation ............................................................................. 90 PART II – CASE-STUDY: GUINEA-BISSAU ................................................................................ 92 5. Research methods and organisation of work ............................................................... 93 5.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 93 5.2 Why Guinea-Bissau? .................................................................................................... 94 5.3 Summary of the research methods employed ............................................................ 97 5.4 Fieldwork (I): Exploratory Phase .................................................................................. 99 4 5.5 Fieldwork (II): Village-level case-studies .................................................................... 101 5.5.1 Introduction........................................................................................................ 101 5.5.2 Aims and hypotheses ........................................................................................