DEVELOPMENT POLICY AND
,i1ANNINI FOL.::"7.A nRICULTURALEc„ IBRAWr , Y 9S.
AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA: CRITICAL NOTES FROM A CASE STUDY IN THE WEST AFRICAN SAHEL
Thomas M Painter
DPP Working Paper No.7 Development Policy and Practice Research Group
Faculty of Technology
The Open University
October 1987
MIGRATIONS, SOCIAL REPRODUCTION, AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA: CRITICAL NOTES FROM A CASE STUDY IN THE WEST AFRICAN SAHEL
by
Thomas M Painter
DPP Working Paper No.7 CONTENTS
Page
1. INTRODUCTION: PERSPECTIVES ON MIGRATION AND 1 DEVELOPMENT IN WEST AFRICA
2. ACCESS TO LAND, AND SOCIAL REPRODUCTION IN SUPANO-SAHELIAN 3 WEST AFRICA
3. ZIGI: A PLATEAU VILLAGE IN NIGER
3.1 Production and Social Reproduction in Zigi 9
3.2 Migrations in Zigi 12
4. MIGRANTS' EARNINGS AND SURVIVAL IN ZIGI 14
4.1 Drought, State Intervention, and Peasant 14 Survival on the Dosso Plateau
4.2 Migrants' Earnings, State Policy, and Changes 16 in the Structure of Subsistance consumption
5. TOWARDS A PERSPECTIVE ON POTENTIAL IMPACT OF MIGRATIONS 18
5.1 Social Reproduction or Dissolution? 18
5.2 Increased Vulnerability to Fluctuations in the 18 World Commodity Market
5.3 Reduced Commitment to Rainfed Agriculture 19
5.4 Factor Endowments, Survival Strategies, and 20 State Agricultural Policies
5.5 Migrations and Development 21
6. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS .24
NOTES 27
REFERENCES 29 Crisis and Thomas M. Painter is with the Project on African Agriculture: York, and is a DPP Transformation, Social Science Research Council, New Research Associate.
in Zigi: Notes on This is a revised version of a paper entitled 'Surviving prepared for the panel Peasants' Lives in Plateau Village in Western Niger', Political Economies at the on Persistent Structures of Inequality in African Association in New Orleans, 28th Annual Meeting of the African Studies like to thank J.H. Mittelman, panel Louisiana, November 23-26, 1985. I would comments on paper. I would also chair, and Joel Samoff, discussant, for their and issues raised by two like to express my appreciation for questions to DPP. The paper is based anonymous reviewers of a revised draft submitted a doctoral dissertation in sociology on research done in Niger for purposes of University of New York, Binghamton, and development anthropology at the State of the Niger government for New York. I would like to thank the authorities and express my appreciation to permitting me to carry out research in Zigi, and help during my stay there. the good people of Zigi for their patience was provided by an International Financial support for the research programme Science Research Council and the Doctoral Research Fellowship from the Social Grant No. SES-8016409 from the American Council of Learned Societies, by and loans from my family and National Science Foundation, and by contributions faith are most gratefully several kind friends. Their support and good acknowledged. 1. INTRODUCTION: PERSPECTIVES oa MIGRATIONS AND DEVELOPMENT IN WEST AFRICA
Studies of migration in West Africa are characterized by divergent views concerning the impact in migrants' areas of origin of earnings by peasant smallholders who are involved in cyclical and longer-term migrations to growth-pole, urban, or pen -urban areas within larger regional economies. From one perspective, the migratory process produces double-dividends for migrants' areas of origin. Migrants' earnings are viewed as feeding into processes of accumulation at the household, community, and regional levels, hence contributing to economic diversification and processes of development in home areas (Adegbola, 1977; Adepoju, 1978; Griffin, 1976; Uchendu, 1975; cf. Amin, 1974a: 66; Amin, 1974b: 102-103). In addition, the absence of one or more male household members during the annual or tulti-year migration cycle is considered to reduce the drain on domestic food supplies.
From a second, more critical perspective, participation of household members in the migratory process is looked at as a major factor undermining domestic economy, or as contributing little to economic development in home areas. Labour needed for maintenance, repairs, and ongoing (much less increased), household production, is siphoned off (Dorjahn, 1971). Specific forms of craft production, usually done by would-be migrants, may also suffer neglect (Gregory, and Piche, 1979: 30-31; Kane and Lericollais, 1975: 185). In the case of labour lost to agricultural production because of the migrants' absence, remaining household members may only partially be able to compensate. Women may be obliged to invest more labour time in crops cultivated principally by men as they seek to adjust a domestic division of labour that has been upset by the early departure, and late - or non-return of male household members, and do so at the expense of staple and cash-crops that have been the primary concern of women during the rainy season months for generations (Berry, 1986: 10-11; Roncoli, 1985: 15-16; Staudt 1987: 39, 41; Stichter, 1985: 11, 34-35).
The limited capacity of hinterland households to reallocate tasks within a well-defined, tightly organized division of labour, may result in declining production as domestic management of labour and land resources becomes over-extended (Connel et al, 1976; Deere, 1976; Lipton, 1982: 203; Maliki et al, 1984: 484-493; Palmer, 1985: 4-14; Skinner, 1965). In addition, the linkage of migrants' households with migrants' areas of destination is a linkage of uneven exchange. Labour is remunerated in growth pole areas on the 2 basis of a bachelor's wage, while, in fact, the low wage must support the migrant in his area of destination, provide partial support for at least one household in the migrant's area of origin, and may support several others through extended kinship linkages (Stichter, 1985: 78f.). Furthermore, migrants' activities often involve menial tasks having little potential for skills transfer, and offer minimal promise for enhancing the migrants' earning power when they return home (Gregory and Piche, 1983; Kane and LericOlais, 1975; Maliki et al, 1984: 488; cf. Miracle and Berry, 1970: 97-98).
The non-remuneration of the cost of production and reproduction of migrant labour power is viewed as a subsidy by sending areas to growth-pole areas of destination, already the focal points of national and multinational investment in production and exchange (Amin, 1974a; Amselle, 1976: 33-34; Gregory and Piche, 1978; Gregory and Piche, 1983: 178-179; Meillassoux, 1975: 139-205; Wolpe, 1972; cf. Painter, 1985: 17-26). The result, however difficult it may be to quantify, is described as a net loss in accumulation/development potential by migrants' households and, writ large, the communities, regions or sub-regions of which they are a part, and a transfer of benefits toward the migrants' areas of destination (Amin, 1974b: 102-103; cf. Gaude, 1976; Todaro, 1976: 70).
There appears to be a strong consensus that areas of destination have benefitted significantly from migrant labour power (Amin, 1967, 1972, 1974a: 72-78; Grandmaison, 1969; Gregory and Piche, 1983; Zachariah and Conde, 1979). The issue of relative and absolute costs and benefits to sending areas of seasonal and longer-term migrations is debated (Amin, 1974c; Lindsay, 1985; Van Binsbergen and Meilink, 1978), and there is a need to match theoretical, and in some cases, polemical positions, with a more careful examination of the evidence on the matter (Gerold-Scheepers and van Bins.bergen, 1978: 24-31). Recent work on the issues suggests that further clarification will require greater attention to the historical specificity of structure and process in migrants' areas of origin and their relationship to capitalist development in areas of destination. These studies also show that there is considerable variation from one situation to another (Gerold-Scheepers and van Binbergen, 1978; Gregory and Piche, 1983; Miracle and Berry, 1970; Stichter, 1985; cf. de Janvry, 1981: 37-39, 99). 3 2. ACCESS TO LAND AND SOCIAL REPRODUCTION IN SUDANO-SAHELIAN WEST AFRICA
One image that emerges from migration studies in West Africa since the mid-1970s has been participation in the migratory process contributing to a partial transformation of the peasant social structures. This has been described by students of peripheral capitalist development as "conservation-dissolution" (Amselle, 1976: 31, 35; Meillassoux, 1975; Rey, 1975; Stavenhagen, 1975: 224) and more recently as "precarious reproduction" (Painter, 1985: 23-24). This terminology has been used to describe a situation where processes of proletarianization do not conform to predictions of theories of class formation based on the experience of European capitalist development. A variety of evidence from research in West Africa suggests that processes of proletarianization are remarkably non-linear in nature, and in some cases, show little sign of completion (Grier, 1981: 25-26; Gregory and Pichd, 1983: 180; cf. Goodman and Redclift, 1982: 68-99). The result appears, instead, to be a process of pauperization, associated with the specific impact of capitalist development in the periphery of the capitalist world economy (Stichter, 1985: 32).(1)
Because access to land in much of Sudano-Sahelian West Africa is conditioned (and, to an extent, guaranteed) by virtue of membership in a collective, kin-based network, absolute access to land is not often cut off. Peasant smallholders (would-be-proletarians) do not lose access to the means of production in land (cf. Lennihan, 1984: 467). Efforts to capture this situation have produced some rather cumbersome formulations: semi-proletarianized peasants; peasant-proletarians; peasants-turned-temporary proletarians; part-lifetime proletarians, etc. (Afana, 1977: 119f.; Gregory and Pichd, 1979: 33f.; Gregory and Piche, 1983: 174; Meillassoux, 1975: 200; Waterman, 1983: 178-190; cf. Arrighi and Saul, 1973: 69f.; Bernstein, 1977: 69; Goodman and Redclift, 1982: 93-98; Stavenhagen, 1975: 77-80).
What remains less clear, however, and what requires close examination, is how continuing absolute access of peasant households to sufficient quantities of land in Sudano-Sahelian West Africa may lose its significance for social reproduction of the household form in the face of declining access to land of sufficient quality. The driving forces behind this decline are several. Extensive, as opposed to intensive land-use patterns, are driven by smallholders' efforts to compensate for declining levels of land productivity and the risk of poor rainfall during any given year, by bringing larger and 4 larger surface areas under cultivation for extended periods. This expansion of cultivated areas and the increased practice of continuous cultivation has increased pressure on uncultivated areas and contributed to a deterioration of generations-old practices of shifting bush fallows, an important mechanism for restoring soil fertility. This, together with a generalized lack of access of smallholders to effective soil fertilization methods (even access to animal manure), and the impact of erosion due to a combination of climate and land husbandry techniques (discussed below), has contributed to a decline in soil fertility. In addition, there occurs an expansion of cultivated areas into zones long considered too risky for rain fed agriculture. These marginal areas are not devoid of claims, however. They have long been exploited by pastoral groups on the basis of historical access to pasture and browse. These groups now find themselves competing for these areas with the intrusive practices of peasant cultivators (Beauvilain, 1977: 155-157; Curry, 1984: 202f., 250; Gregoire and Raynaut, 1980: 10, 105).
The expansive, prolonged use of extensive cultivation leaves increasingly large areas of soils in the Sudano-Sahelian zone exposed to erosive climatic factors, among them, high ambient temperatures and strong, drying winds that carry off large but undetermined quantitites of topsoil each year during the 8 to 9 month dry-season. As areas of cultivated land increase and are cultivated for longer periods, with production varying considerably from year to year largely as a function of rainfall, land productivity appears to decline. This relationship over time in one Sahelian country, the Niger Republic, is suggested by Figure 1 which presents official figures on total cultivated land areas and land productivity from 1961 to 1982. It is noteworthy that these government figures may at once seriously underestimate the size of cultivated areas and overestimate yield levels (Gregoire and Raynaut, 1980: 20-29). MILLIONS OF HECTARES
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These factors contribute to declining access to land of sufficient quality despite continuing access to sufficient quantities of land (in terms of ratios of surface area to producer or household) due to the persistence of communal tenure. Under these conditions, domestic production often fails to satisfy domestic consumption needs. Earnings by household members who migrate to other areas of West Africa thus become critically important for survival; i.e., to cover household production shortfalls. If migrants' earnings are used for non-consumption purposes at all, they may be utilized to diversify rural households away from a heavy and extremely risky dependence on rainfed agriculture rather than to improve agricultural performance through investment in production (Berry, 1984: 93-94; Kerven, 1980: 37; Lipton, 1982: 210-211; Painter, 1985: 457-475, 536-541; Stichter, 1985: 46-57).
In the remarks to follow, we will present evidence of this pattern of earnings-use observed among households of peasant migrants in the Dosso area of southwestern Niger during field research from 1981 to 1983, and consider the possible linkages between migrations and development.
3. ZIG': A PLATEAU VILLAGE IN NIGER (2)
Zigi is a small (c. 300 pop.) village, inhabited by Zarm-speaking members of the Goubey ethnic group (Gado, 1980: 187-188; Karimou, 1977: 41-80; Poncet, 1973: 22-24; Streicker, 1980: 174-182). It is comprised of 39 households, located in the plateau area that makes up most of the northern part of Dosso department, in southwestern Niger Republic.
The Dosso plateau is covered with a savanna steppe vegetation. The soils consist of relatively unleached ferruginous tropical or latosoils, and are representative of those throughout what is often termed Niger's agriculturally useful zone (areas where the annual average rainfall exceeds 350 mm; see note 4). The soils are of poor'quality, but are light in texture (with sand accounting for 80 to 90% of soil mass), easy to work, and suitable for cultivation of grain crops (Ferguson, 1979: 5; Michel, 1980: 18-19; World Bank, 1985: 2-4; University of Arizona, 1980: 18-22).
Land tenure throughout the plateau area is based on lineage-based ownership, access and management. Claims to a given area of land, and control over access to it, are vested in patrilineages linked to the individual or individuals who first cleared land and founded or co-founded a given village 7
(Painter, 1985: 70-77). Household members gain access to use rights through a variety of arrangements (loans, rental), but final claims remain with the patrilineage. Land-sales are rare on the plateau, and none were recorded in Zigi during the period of research.
Land-use patterns involve a combination of spatial and management distinctions common to the organization of production throughout the Sudano-Sahelian zone (Beauvilain, 1977: 137-138; Hill, 1972: 20, 38-56; Nicolas and Mainet, 1964; Nicolas, 1965; Painter, 1986, 1986: 199-201; Raynaut, 1980, 19-28; Watts, 1986: 195-196).
These distinctions consist of infields and outfields, and fields managed by the household head and individual household members. Infields are located close to the village and are often adjacent to the household concession. These fields are cultivated year after year, sometimes for decades without fallow. Any animal manure used in agricultural production is applied to infields, which also benefit from regular dumpings of concession sweepings and cooking fire ashes. Due to cost and risk considerations, Zigi inhabitants rarely use chemical fertilizer on their fields.
Outfields, located five to ten kilometres from the village, are less carefully cleared and cultivated, are rarely manured, never fertilized, and are cultivated for shorter periods, after which they are left to revert to bush fallow. Formerly, outfields were left in fallow for up to twenty years, but Zigi villagers assert that, currently, even five-year fallows are exceptional (cf. Beauvilain, 1977: 133f.). This is due in part to the extensive nature of production practices used throughout the area, population growth, and increasing settlement. In some cases, a third set, of "far" outfields, located even farther from the village, are also used to supplement household production. Very little effort is invested in these fields, where returns on labor may be viewed as a windfall. They are quickly and partially cleared of existing vegetation, planted, and are weeded as domestic labor resources allow once fields closer to the village have been cared for.
A second distinction is that between fields managed by the household head and those managed by individual household members. The former, termed windi koy farivan or the household (concession) head's fields, receive labour from all household members at some point in the agricultural cycle. Fields (kurba) 8 that are allocated by the household head to individual household members (spouses and unmarried sons and daughters) are often located at a distance from the village. Kurba production and return from produce sales are managed by the individuals independently of production on the household field except during times of extreme food shortages, when some pooling may occur (cf. Raulin, 1963: 52-53; Raynaut, 1973: 33-35).
Principal cultivars in Zigi fields include millets (Pennisetum spp.), with early-maturing (90 to 100 days) varieties predominating, cowpeas (Vigna unguiculata), Bambara groundnuts (Voandzeia subterranea), groundnuts (Arachis hypogaea), sesame (Sesamum indicum), sorrel (Hibiscis sabdarifa), and some okra (Hibiscis esculentus). Sorghum and manioc (Manihot esculenta) are often cultivated in scattered areas where heavier, clayey soils occur, and in low-lying areas and depressions where silty accumulations are formed by heavy runoff during the yearly rainy season months. All crops are cultivated extensively - plants are widely spaced. Average planting densities observed for millet, the principal staple grain, varied from 0.73 plants per square metre for a sample of Zigi infields, to 0.43 in outfields. Plant densities in "far" outfields averaged 0.38 plants per square metre (Painter, 1985: 84).
The water table on the plateau is relatively deep, ranging from 25 to 60 metres. This makes infeasible the practice of small-scale irrigation of tree crops (principally mangoes, guavas, and citrus) and a variety of other crops (sugar cane, manioc, vegetables, rice, etc.) during the dry-season months that occurs in the dry river bed areas of the country to the west and east of the plateau (Beauvilain, 1977: 131-132; De Latour Dejean, 1975; Guillaume, 1974: 113-114; Painter, 1979: 55f.; Painter, 1985: 89-92, 461-471; Samna, 1980; cf. Raynaut, 1969; Watts 1983: 399-402). This factor, combined with the poor quality of the plateau's soils, has contributed to relatively less demographic pressure on arable land in the area, where average population densities range from 20 to 30 persons per km2, less than half those recorded in some dry river valley areas of Niger (Beauvilain, 1977: 64-68; Republique du Niger, 1978, Vol. II: 22). Still, Zigi inhabitants complain that there are hardly any uncultivated (virgin bush) areas left, and that all land in the area has a claim of some kind attached to it. As an incident observed during the research period attests, disputes over these claims occasionally result in violence (Painter, 1985). 9
Rainfall on the plateau averages 450 mm per year, with about 35 days of measurable precipitation occurring during each rainy season. This compares with 671 mm in Dosso, 836 mm in Gaya, near the international border with the Benin Republic, and 575 mm in the capital, Niamey (Painter, 1985: 42, 99). The rainy season months include the period from June/July through September/October, with as much as two-thirds of total precipitation occurring during July and August (Republique du Niger 1978, Vol. II: 18). Rainfall during this period may be torrential, resulting in serious sheet erosion, gullying, and destruction of crops in the fields, which are devoid of ground cover due to the effects of land-clearing and weeding practices.
Agricultural implements used by Zigi villagers are simple, totally dependent on human labor, and well-adapted to varying soil conditions (Raulin, 1963; Raulin, 1984; Raynaut, 1984). Despite promotional efforts in the area by colonial and post-colonial governments since the 1920s, no animal-drawn equipment is used for cultivation.
The harvest of early-maturing millet may begin in September, and continue for a month or more, involving repeated trips to the field where ears of grain are cut from the plants as they ripen. Late-maturing millet and cowpeas are harvested well into November. Harvested grain is stored unthrashed on the stalk, stacked in household granaries, and used as needed during the months before the next year's crop is in.
To anyone who passes by the clusters of dusty brown thatch huts that makes up this nucleated community near the national highway of laterite and sand that links the arrondissement centre of Sabon Gari, to the north, with Dosso to the south, Zigi resembles many other small bush villages in Niger. The community is poor and is characterized by minimal differentiation. The absence of anything even resembling a shop suggests that Zigi is yet another African village with few viable links to modernized or "developed" sectors. Closer inspection reveals that life in Zigi is more complicated. Social reproduction in this village community is precarious reproduction. Furthermore, life in Zigi is critically linked to distant areas of West Africa, within a larger regional economy, as we will see below.
3.1 Production and Social Reproduction in Zigi
Zigi villagers, like peasant smallholders throughout the West African Sahel, labour in agricultural production with a view toward satisfaction of domestic 10 consumption needs. Production is overwhelmingly production of use-value; the objective, above all, is simple reproduction (cf. Bernstein, 1977: 64). Only a small fraction of grain production is sold. Despite this preoccupation with survival, more than half of Zigi households (and other plateau villages) may spend two months or more of each year with their granaries empty (Painter, 1985: 397-398). In some cases, domestic grain supplies may be exhausted as early as January, leaving households to face up to eight months totally dependent on extra-household sources of food. Figure 2 summarizes observations made during July 1982 of domestic millet supplies remaining from the 1981 harvest in the granaries of 27 Zigi households. It should be noted that the 1980 and 1981 cropping years had been good. The data were collected when the millet harvest in Zigi was easily two months away, yet half of the households contacted had no more grain remaining from the 1981 crop. Overall, more than 70% of the household had no millet remaining or expected to exhaust their supplies before mid-August.(3)
Household survival requires that grain shortfalls be compensated. Grain must be purchased for cash. The situation faced by most Zigi households, represents, in microcosm, the dilemma faced by thousands of peasant smallholder households throughout Niger and neighbuoring Sahelian countries: how to secure the cash they need to subsist or to survive? In addition to the substantial sums of money required each year to purchase needed food grain during the preharvest months, life in apparently simple Zigi requires that supplies of other basic commodities be continually renewed; i.e. purchased for cash. Conspicuous consumption is absent in Zigi, but commodity consumption is conspicuous in its pervasiveness as a necessity of social reproduction (cf. Raynaut, 1977; Watts, 1983: 406, 414). Each day small amounts of cash must be mobilized to purchase a variety of items ranging from cooking oil, salt, and other condiments to a limited range of necessary durables, occasionally medications, and clothing (Painter, 1985: 400-401, 424, n.2). On top of this, yearly head taxes must be paid. During a given year, the money spent in this manner may be considerable. To this basic figure, we must emphasize, must be added the expenditures required to secure essential food grains not produced in household fields (Painter, 1985: 397-403, 424, n.2). ii
o zo p( 73% of P total) 'l% c-4- / ,. - 16 0 7 414
• .12 -6- -1 10 0
3 - 6 ca.) • 4 2 0 C.1 1 ▪ 2.. 'D 0 0 SOND FmA Mi A SON tientst Harvest
1981 1982
State of mil1,2t supplies in 26 Zigi households during; late July 1982
Number of households whose millet supplies ended during month. Cumulative number of households without millet or whose supplies were expected to end by mid-August
Source: Painter (1985: 398). 12 Social reproduction in Zigi is complex as well as precarious. For most villagers, survival depends on a web of linkages within a larger West African regional economy. Many of the commodities required for daily life are locally available only after movement along a chain of dendritic linkages that connect hinterland points in the Sahel, like Zigi and Sabon Gari, with secondary cities like Dosso, and Maradi to the east, Niamey, Niger's capital, and primary and intermediate centres in neighbouring Nigeria, Benin, and Togo, and through them, regional linkages with the capitalist world economy (Painter, 1985: 137-177). These commodity links are only part of the picture, however, for Zigi households also have a long history of more direct linkages with distant growth-pole areas in the regional economy.
3.2 Migrations in Zigi
The outsider who happens to visit Zigi or any of the hundreds of plateau villages in the Dosso area from November well into May of the next year, is likely to leave the experience with an uncanny, unsettling feeling. Village after village offers the same scene. Initially, each community appears almost to be deserted. Closer inspection reveals that the villages are inhabited but largely by older men, by women and children. The latter are ceaselessly active, and often seem to be drifting beyond the control of their watchful keepers. Older adolescent boys and young and middle-aged men are missing. Situations like this are, and have long been considered, a fact of social life in villages throughout western Niger.
Villagers in Zigi are involved to a marked degree in annual migrations, a massive yearly displacement of men from plateau villages that has become a commonplace among students of West African economic development, international and national development planners, and even households in Zigi (Berg, 1965; cf. Painter, 1987b). Almost two-thirds of all Zigi men between sixteen and sixty years of age leave the village each year. From October to November, or once the harvest is nearly complete, men from Zigi join thousands of others from the Dosso area who fill the truck-stops along the dusty national highway that links Sabon Gari with Dosso, and the truck parks in Dosso, Gaya, and Niamey in search of connections for destinations in countries along the Guinea Coast. These migrations are overwhelmingly migrations of men; women are rarely involved (cf. Nolan, 1986: 87f.; Stichter, 1985: 150-158). Most men return home the next year, during the extremely hot months of April and May, 13 just before the onset of the rainy season. The majority travel to the Ivory Coast; smaller numbers go to cities in Nigeria; fewer still travel to Benin or Togo. Most Zigi men work the intersticies of the extroverted coffee economy of the Ivory Coast as ambulant petty traders. In the main, they peddle lengths of cloth and a variety of goods, collectively referred to by Zarma speakers as nymaa nymaa, that predictably include women's scarves, perfumes, pomades, bath soap, children's underwear, and cheap jewellery. A few travel to Lagos and Ibadan in Nigeria to engage in petty trade and unskilled labour, but to a much lesser extent than in areas east of the plateau (Painter, 1985: 310-339).
Up to 90% of Zigi households contain one or more members who migrate annually to the coastal areas of West Africa. The cumulative impact of the migratory process on Zigi is even greater: 92% of all households contacted are currently involved or have been involved in migrations during the past. Individual migration histories of Zigi men range from a year for first-timers to more than thirty years for veterans. Evidence suggests that the typical Zigi man travels to the coast each year during a period of about twenty years of his adult life. Rare are the men who can claim never to have migrated. The current pattern of yearly migrations to the Ivory Coast dates from the mid-1960s. Prior to this, men from Zigi and villages in western Niger migrated principally to Ghana (and Nigeria) in a pattern of massive migrations whose beginnings can be traced to the turn of the century. With their counterparts from the Mossi plateau of Burkina Faso, Zarma migrants contributed during this period to the development of export agriculture (principally cocoa), mining and infrastructural development in the growth pole areas of the regional economy, and southern Ghana in particular. The historical changes in these migration patterns have been detailed elsewhere and need not be repeated here (Holden, 1965; Rouch, 1956, 1957; Painter, 1985: 244-382; Painter, 1987b and forthcoming). While these are largely annual migrations, some men may stay in the coastal areas for more than one year. This is especially true when their earnings are insufficient. They send what money they can with relatives, fellow villagers, or inhabitants of other nearby plateau villages, but they stay on. 14 Thus most Zigi households are also migrant households. To a significant degree, their capacity to subsist is critically dependent on the earnings of male members who engage in petty trade and unskilled labour in the distant coastal areas as well as the returns on household labour in subsistence agriculture in Zigi fields. Household and community reproduction in Zigi - and throughout much of southwestern Niger - are no longer possible (and to villagers, are almost inconceivable) without these long-distance migrations.
4. MIGRANTS' EARNINGS AND SURVIVAL IN ZIGI
4.1 Drought, State Intervention, and Peasant Survival on the Dosso Plateau
Adversity - chronic, due to long-term features of the physical conditions, and acute, due to the effects of shorter-term crises caused by droughts and the impact of state policies of extracting labour, production, and taxes - has given rise to and sustained annual migrations among peasants from Zigi and many other villages in Niger. Southern Niger, which contains most of the land considered by planners and smallholders alike to be agriculturally useful, nonetheless, has long had a reputation as an area of marginal utility for agriculture due to a combination of climate and soil characteristics described above (Fuglestad, 1983; Higgott, 1979; Rash, 1972; Streicker, 1980). Recurrent drought and repeated, massive attacks by insect pests have been major factors in a setting which, at best, can be described as difficult. Seven, largely localized, droughts affected nearby Hausaland to the southeast during the nineteenth century (Lovejoy and Baier, 1975; Watts 1983: 99). Sixteen droughts of some severity were recorded in or near Zarma country from 1900 to 1984 (Painter, 1985: 49-51; Fuglestad, 1974; Sidikou, 1974: 22-25). At several critical points in the area's history, the difficulties of life in a harsh setting have been severely aggravated by external factors. Perhaps the most drastic instance during recent history occurred during the late 1890s.
In 1898, following several years of drought in southwestern Niger, French troops arrived in the Dosso area, having travelled from Karimana in Dahomey (Benin) to the south. They established a military post in Dosso village the same year. In short order, the military introduced a variety of measures to extract crops, labour and other needed goods from Dosso area peasants (Painter, 1987b). In less than a year, the area's inhabitants were subjected 15 to another, particularly violent encounter with Europeans. This occurred when a column of the Mission Afrique Centrale, the Mission Voulet-Chanoine, passed through on its way from Djenne via Say and eastward to Lake Tchad. The mission consisted of six French officers, an estimated 600 African soldiers, 200 women, 800 porters, and 500 head of cattle (Perie and Sellier, 1950: 1061). On the heels of the measures implemented by the French military at the Dosso post, the Mission Voulet-Chanoine arrived, angered by the fearful, hostile reception given them by local populations along their route. Dosso area peasants reacted similarly. The column responded by seizing and destroying large quantities of staple grain and animals, killing hundreds of villagers, and burning more than fifty villages as it moved through the area (Abadie, 1927: 315; Rolland, 1976).
The havoc caused by the Mission Voulet-Chanoine, which is considered to be one of the darkest chapters in French colonial history, was only the beginning. Thereafter, the French military continued to tighten its grip on the peasantry and to increase pressure on peasant labour and production through the imposition of a head tax in 1900. Initially the tax was payable in produce or animals. Not long after, payment of taxes in cowries was required and, by 1909, taxes could be paid solely in (extremely scarce) currency (Rothiot, 1984: 3310. The colonial administration continued to appropriate peasant production and labour through a proliferation of taxes during the three decades that followed.
The cumulative impact of this bleeding of meagre resources from agrarian populations of southwestern Niger served to undermine their capacity to deal with and recover from external stress of a more natural kind. Drought recurred during the early years of the century, and the attendant famines were serious. It might be argued that the coincidental impact of natural factors, principally drought, and primitive accumulation by the state helped to set the stage, particularly from 1898 to about 1920, for the present precariousness of social reproduction throughout much of the area..
The extractive measures introduced by the state during the first decades of this century continued, with little modification, well into Niger's post-colonial years. The pressures of state fiscal policies were relieved only in 1975, when head taxes were reduced following one of the worst droughts and famines on record (1969-1974) and the demise of the Niger's first post-colonial government (Higgot and Fuglestad, 1975). 16
4.2 Migrants' Earnings, State Policy, and Changes in the Structure of Subsistence Consumption
Under these conditions, earnings from the massive peasant migrations that are so characteristic of life in plateau villages enable households to purchase grain during the hot preharvest months when energy requirements are heavy for preparation of fields, planting and cultivation of new crops. A subsample of ten Zigi men returned from coastal countries in 1982 showed earnings ranging from 5,000 CFA francs (equivalent to $17) to 200,000 francs ($680), with median earnings amounting to 53,300 francs ($178). The same men reported that 25% of all of their earnings that year were spent on staple grains alone, with the median expenditure for food accounting for almost 80% of earnings (Painter, 1985: 418-420).
The dependence of household capacity to satisfy staple grain requirements for domestic consumption on migrants' earnings has been observed elsewhere in the Dosso department (Republique du Niger, 1981: 30), in Niger (Keita, 1978: 241-243; Gregoire and Raynaut, 1980: 115-118; Sutter, 1982: 188-203), and in other areas of Africa (Adepoju 1978: 86f.; Conde et al. 1986: 114-115; Kane and Lericollais, 1975: 184; Kerven, 1980: 37f.; and Lipton, 1982: 210-211).
During the preharvest months the Niger government sells a variety of staple grains, including Nigerien millet at below comparable market prices at warehouses operated by the Office des Produits Vivriers du Niger (OPVN). This policy dates from drought relief efforts begun during the long 1969-74 drought, but also reflects government efforts to stabilize grain prices in the country during the preharvest months, particularly for inhabitants of Niger's larger towns and cities. Sales in the Zigi area (Sabon Can) reportedly date from 1974. The cheapest of the grains sold by OPVN is corn, imported from coastal countries (e.g. Togo) or from Europe. American sorghum sells at a slightly higher price while the most expensive grain is millet from Niger and Nigeria. As Table 1 shows, however, even the relatively expensive OPVN millet is less expensive than millet sold by merchants in nearby Sabon Can. Data collected during 1981-82 on grain purchases in Zigi indicate that purchases of subsidized grains from the OPVN accounted for a large percentage of total expenditures for grain, as villagers attempted to cover domestic production shortfalls. 17
TABLE 1: Price of Major Staple Grains at OPVN and Shops in Sabon Gari During 1982
Grain Price
CFA francs per 100 kg. sack US$ Equivalent
OPVN Corn 9,000 29 Sorghum 11,000 35.50 Millet 12,000 39
SABON GARI SHOPS
Millet 15,000 48.50
Source: Painter 1985: 402-404
But more is involved than the purchase of lower-priced grain. A different kind of grain is being purchased and incorporated into household diets, a grain that is not produced in Niger in any significant amount. During several months of each year cheaper imported corn displaces even local millet in most Zigi households. In terms of consumption recorded for nineteen village households, this represents, on average, a purchase of 297 kilograms of corn, 56 kilograms of millet, and 47 kilograms of sorghum consumed solely during the period from January to July 1982, all of which must be paid for in cash. In terms of household expenditures, this amount of grain was worth, on average, 44,200 CFA francs, the equivalent of $143 (Painter, 1985: 405).
Taken together, purchases by Zigi households studied during 1982 amounted to almost nine metric tons of grain, 74% of which was corn. An estimated 85% of all corn was purchased at the OPVN, the remainder was purchased at nearby markets or from merchants in Sabon Gari (Ibid. 406). The substitution of cheaper imported corn for more expensive, locally or regionally produced millet, makes it possible for many Zigi households to stretch migrants' earnings during the dry season months and the cultivation season before the next harvest. Annual migrations from southwestern Niger to the Ivory Coast and Nigeria make these purchases possible, thus migrants' earnings make survival possible in the Sahel. Or so it appears. 18
5. TOWARDS A PERSPECTIVE ON POTENTIAL IMPACT OF MIGRATIONS
5.1 Social Reproduction or Dissolution?
households within Participation in the migratory process has integrated Zigi economy processes of capitalist development within a West African regional world economy) to a (situated in turn within the periphery of the capitalist of the historical greater extent than would have occured solely on the basis 1974a; Amselle, 1976; deepening of commodity relations in everyday life (Amin, evidence we have Gregory and Piche, 1978, 1979; Wallerstein, 1976). The has, in a presented above suggests that this specific form of integration possible. In so doing, sense, made social reproduction, however precarious, to the impact of however, Zigi households have become extremely vulnerable in turn on fluctuations in the world commodity market and their impact processes of production and social reproduction in Zigi.
Commodity Market 5.2 Increased Vulnerability to Fluctuations in the World
Coast coffee beans First, price fluctuations on the world market for Ivory of that country to affect the capacity of growth pole areas in the south Sahelian West Africa. absorb labour power from the hinterland countries of these variations also Secondly, and of particular importance to Zigi migrants, in the coastal have a powerful impact on the mass and velocity of currency purchasing power areas due to marketing of coffee, and critically affect the peddled by Zigi of coastal populations who buy - or don't buy - the goods coffee market, migrants. When there is blight, drought or glut on the world as it did during or when world demand declines through generalized recession prices from the late 1970s and early 1980s, with a resultant drop in coffee World Bank, seven dollars to three dollars per kilogram (Painter, 1985: 476; obtained 1983: 11), Zigi peasants may ,spend the equivalent of $160 (often wives) for a through partial liquidation of small ruminants owned by their little and may round-trip of up to 3,000 kilometres to the coast that produces by Zigi end in debt. While the price elasticities for the nymaa nymaa sold are migrants are considerable, the continuing food needs of Zigi households a potential not. The migration option massively exposes Zigi households to the double-bind situation. Annual migrations from southwestern Niger to of life, Guinea Coast countries have attained the normative status of a fact to yet they have introduced an historically novel element of precariousness the already difficult lives of peasants in Zigi. 19
5.3 Reduced Commitment to Rainfed Agriculture
A second potential impact of Zigi households' involvement in the migratory process may be found in the sphere of production itself. The very possibility that migrations to the coast may pay off holds another potential threat to social continuity in areas of Sudano-Sahelian West Africa such as the Dosso plateau. This consists of a further withdrawal of energies from rainfed grain production during the active years of an adult male's life, and potentially, across generations of peasant smallholders. Such an outcome also promises to increase the already heavy burden of Zigi women in production and social reproduction (Diarra, 1971; Painter, 1985: 81-82; Samna, 1980: 17-18; cf. Berry, 1986: 10-11, 20-21; Palmer, 1985). A trip to the coast entails considerable risk. The returns from migrations are problematic, yet their potential for enabling Zigi households to attain the next harvest is viewed as greater than the prospects of remaining in the Dosso plateau area during the dry-season months.
If earnings cover the trip to the coast, and petty trade or returns on labour provide a return, cheaper, imported grain can be purchased at the OPVN in Sabon Gari. The linkage between access to cheaper grains and an absolute decline in time/energy/care/land/labour in local rainfed production on household fields remains to be investigated, much less demonstrated, but observations in Zigi and dther Dosso plateau villages suggest that the attitudinal basis already exists for such a deterioration. There is a generalized discouragement, bordering occasionally on despair, among adult men concerning the future of agriculture on the plateau, and a manifest disinterest among many migrants' children in the prospects of farming like their parents and grandparents. It is difficult to imagine how women in Zigi, who do not migrate, hence have no relief from the continuing demands of household life, can assume an even greater burden in overall production.
Migration as a "subsistence strategy" may contribute to a further decline in the position of marginal households, making them more vulnerable during years when migrant males return empty-handed, or when drought years make it impossible to bridge the hunger gap despite migrants' earnings due to (a) the size of household grain deficits, and (b) increases of up to 100% in the cost of grain during the interharvest period. It may also provide the impetus to break with the land that long periods of cyclical migration have not 20 accomplished because social reproduction, while precarious, has been possible (cf. de Janvry, 1981: 37-39).
5.4 Factor Endowments, Survival Strategies, and State Agricultural Policies
More is involved than the differences in factor endowments which, in the view of some students of rural society in West Africa, make migrations such an efficient response by Sahelian populations. While it is true that the physical conditions of agricultural production in the forest zones of the Guinea Coast are very different from those of the Sudano-Sahelian areas of West Africa, the differences cannot be reduced to eco-geographical considerations alone. It is essential that we look at these conditions, in part, as resulting from the impact of state agricultural policies and changing husbandry practices of smallholders within the context of dependent capitalist development in periphery.
In the case of southwestern Niger, Zarma household members attempt to compensate for declining land productivity by increasing total production, and do so under conditions of extreme resource scarcity. This is accomplished through continued expansion of areas under cultivation without significant improvements in household access to key resources such as labour, credit, fertilizer, and often, even manure or the capacity to more effectively manage the meagre productive resources available to them, such as labour and land-restoration practices such as fallows (Painter, 1985: 362-378; cf. Raynaut, 1980: 37-47; Raynaut, 1984: 511-514).
The result appears to be a generalized decline in the efficiency of cultivation, as suggested by aggregate figures on land productivity (see Figure 1 above), and, more importantly, as perceived by Zigi peasants over time (Painter, 1987a: 150). 'Capital for productive investment is drained away by food expenditures, the risks of investment in rainfed agriculture are perceived as extremely high, household capacity to expand cultivated areas is limited by their access to labour, and labour, if obtained through extra-kin ties, is a relatively expensive production factor. Under these conditions, extensive cultivation of staple food crops continues, made possible in part by the persistence of communal tenure and by continuing high fertility (cf. Gregory and Piche, 1979; Mamdani, 1974). Yet this labour-creating strategy cannot but eventually add to demographic pressure on accessibility of land of sufficient quality and quantity to satisfy domestic consumption needs. 21
The result of this "subsistence - or holding - strategy", even in the absence of the decreasing commitment to rainfed agriculture that we have suggested above, may be a further decline in the effectiveness of household labour and land management, over-clearing of land areas, and an aggravation of the negative impact on soil quality of erosion and reduced fallows.
Patterns of husbandry have also been affected by state interventions. State (and multi- and bilateral) policies for agricultural development have given little or no attention to (a) important variations in the physical conditions of peasant smallholder production in Niger; (b) the structure of risk that frames producers' decisions about resource use; and (c) producers' chronic need for cash. One result of this has been an extremely poor performance by multimillion dollar agricultural development projects in Niger and throughout Sudano-Sahelian West Africa (Franke and Chasin, 1980; Painter et al, 1985; Painter, 1987a; Republique du Niger, 1984: 15-16, 39-51 (cf. Republique du Niger, 1980: 157-166); Watts, 1983: 498-505; World Bank, 1978).
5.5 Migrations and Development
In the introduction to this paper we suggested that the linkage between migrations and development in the migrants' areas of origin is a debated issue. It is also evident that generalizations concerning the linkage are difficult because of the considerable empirical variation that occurs (Miracle and Berry, 1970; Stichter, 1985). Despite the risks involved, we would argue that throughout much of Sudano-Sahelian West Africa, the linkage is weak in the extreme. The squeeze on simple reproduction is such that migrants' earnings are now critical to the survival of domestic units of production and resource-pooling (cf. Bernstein, 1977). As a consequence, migrants' earnings are, quite literally speaking, eaten up. We have suggested in addition that the apparent respite that the migration option offers to Sahelian peasants may actually exacerbate the situation. Whether it does. or not is at once a critical consideration and a question that merits careful study.
To argue as we do is not to suggest, however, that there is no link between migrations and capital accumulation in the Sahelian hinterlands. Below, we present a possible scenario for the formation of such linkages. This composite picture is based on individual histories of Dosso area migrants, and is presented very schematically as a means of helping to focus studies of 22 accumulation strategies by peasants within the context of peripheral capitalist development and in relation to the migratory process. The description below does not address the relation between accumulation capacity and the location of a given individual within a household at a particular stage in its domestic development cycle. Clearly this is a critical consideration that any study must address.
A returned migrant from the area north of Dosso may engage in and attain some success in local trade - small scale resale of commodities purchased on the coast, at nearby periodic markets, or from traders in the capital or secondary cities and towns (e.g., Dosso, Sabon Gari). Strictly local (village) commerce may become subregional and even regional in scope as the trader participates in periodic markets at varying distances from his home village. Continued accumulation may lead to the integration of kin and non-kin labour in commodity trade and transport as a means of providing the trader with a commercial presence in his own village as well as participation within a widening radius of periodic markets in the area, and potentially, a larger region. A vehicle (typically used) eventually may be purchased to transport the merchant's goods to markets. To his own goods may be added consignments from other traders, and increasing numbers of traders themselves as paying passengers who attend the markets to buy and sell.
These strategies all promote the accumulation of mercantile wealth. Typically, however, no investment occurs in production. The one exception is livestock. While most Dosso area peasants have repeatedly learned that this can be an extremely high-risk investment because of recurrent drought and livestock disease, the link between mercantile accumulation of the kind we are describing and investment in livestock as an intermediate strategy appears to be strong and certainly merits closer examination (Painter, 1985: 458-461).
Profits in trade may be used to expand the base for accumulation in exchange through investment in commercial infrastructure. Modest warehouses, depots, and shop buildings may be rented, purchased or constructed in important periodic market towns, in villages located at keY highway and road junctions, and at points on trade routes where the mode of transportation changes; e.g. from motor vehicle to pack anaimals and vice-versa. Eventually, capital may be invested in rental property in the capital or in important secondary cities, thus adding rents to the basis of accumulation (Berry, 1984: 93-94; 23 Kane and Lericollais, 1975: 185, 187; Painter, 1985: 476-493; Watts, 1983: 411). Investment of this kind tends initially to focus on the purchase and/or construction of simple multiple-user dwellings, often of sun-dried mud brick (banco), with a series of small rented rooms located around a central court to maximize returns on investment. Rentals cater to single and unaccompanied men and younger families from rural areas. This may be followed by investment in more sophisticated, costlier housing, oriented toward members of the mercentile or bureaucratic bourgeoisie or expatriate development personnel.
Eventual investment in agricultural production follows and depends on the success of efforts to accumulate capital on the basis of trade and transport of agricultural commodities and, later, rental income (cf. Goodman and Redclift, 1982: 109-110). Productive investment may take the form of hired labour for increased production of staple crops (particularly millet and cowpeas) for sale and lending at high rates of interest, purchase of simple, animal-drawn farm implements, fertilizers and insecticides, and occasionally, well-watered bottom lands, having potential for the development of commercial tree crops (especially mangoes, but also citrus and guava), rice, sugar cane, and the important "hungry season" crop, manioc.
The link between migration and development is far from direct. The probability is good that if an individual migrant happens also to use improved production techniques, his favoured situation is the result of a long series of attempts to diversify investments away from agricultural production.(6) Such an accumulation strategy may provide the groundwork for an eventual return to production as an area of investment. In these cases, however, the objective is not simple, but expanded reproduction. Thus it is only much later - often a matter of a decade or more - that the connection is made between migration and development of the forces of production in agriculture. It is here that we find the modest beginnings of labour power absorption in agriculture, the use of more capital-intensive inputs, and animal and mechanical power in production per se (donkey and oxen-drawn plows and multicultivators, and in exceptional cases, tractors). This return to production occurs, however, only after the risk's of investment have been thoroughly covered by investment in relatively lucrative, low-risk areas outside production. 24
6. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
We have presented materials from a case study of Zigi, a village in southwestern Niger. The incidence in Zigi of migrations is very high, involving nine out of ten village households. Typically, a man from Zigi makes these round-trips of up to 3,000 kilometres over a period of twenty years during his adult life. While there is considerable variation in the earnings from these migrations, in the aggregate, repatriated sums are significant.
The causes of these cyclical migrations are multiple, long-term, and interactive, and include the impact of several factors:
1. Extremely harsh physical conditions of agricultural production (and social reproduction): poor soils; meagre, variable rainfall; and a single, brief season for rainfed cultivation.
2. Recurrent environmental crises: severe, shorter-term droughts; insect damage to crops; and severe water and wind erosion.
3. Deepening of commodity relations in social reproduction, resulting in a continual need of, and search by, the household for cash.
4. Agricultural practices that appear to be increasingly counterproductive for sustainable agricultural production: continued extensive cultivation of crops in a manner that may not make optimal use of land or labour resources; a reduction if not an elimination of fallow cycles; and little access to animal manure, much less chemical fertilizer, as a means of restoring soil nutrients.
5. Domestic food production that is insufficient to cover household consumption needs.
6. State policies during the colonial and post-colonial periods of labour and product extraction and rural taxation.
We have raised several issues concerning the relation between migrations of men from villages like Zigi to areas along the Guinea Coast, and the possibilities, based on migrants' earnings and potential investment, for development of the productive forces in agriculture in home areas. We have 25 focused our attention on the potential linkage between massive migrations and agricultural development in the migrants' home areas in order to question an image that is popular among economists, development planners, and students of development - that cyclical migrations from low to high potential areas in West Africa contribute to: (a) a more rational allocation of production factors (i.e. labour power); and (b) investment in agricultural production, hence to increased production, greater surpluses, greater absorption of labour power in agriculture, etc., in the migrants' areas of origin.
While the Dosso area offers many examples of the need for productive investment of migrants' earnings, our case study materials suggest that the linkage between earnings and the development of productive forces in agriculture is: (a) weak; (b) very selective, hence at odds with a view of a wide-spread, positive impact of migrations on living standards in home areas; and (c) occurs only gradually, following a variety of strategies by migrants initially to diversify their investments away from rainfed agricultural production in order to cover the risks that eventually will accompany investment in agriculture.
We have outlined possible accumulation strategies or paths as a means of suggesting avenues for further study and have argued for the need to examine individual biographies. We stress, however, that the study of successful and unsuccessful accumulators must occur with attention to the dynamic connection between the individual and larger contexts of kinship, gender, the household development cycle, class, region, and the world economy as the latter affects the structure of commodity production and consumption, hence the uneven development of demand for labour power in processes of production.
If we can generalize at all about the wide-spread impact of migrants' earnings on peasants' lives on the Dosso plateau, we can only say this much with confidence: migrants' earnings allow many villagers to survive; they make social reproduction possible, albeit precariously. The precarious nature of social reproduction, linked as it is to migrations, has several features. First, precarious reproduction occurs by virtue of the partial integration of peasant households within a larger West African regional economy. Life and survival in villages like Zigi are heavily dependent on migrants' earnings; these in turn, are heavily dependent on the effective demand for the goods they sell in the coastal areas. Effective demand, in turn is critically 26 affected by the state of the world market for agricultural commodites - coffee and, to a lesser extent, cocoa. Should the coffee harvest in the Ivory Coast be poor or overproduction occur in other coffee producing areas of the world economy, the earnings of Zigi migrants in petty trade will drop sharply, and with them, the capacity of Zigi households to purchase needed staple grains for domestic consumption.
A second aspect of precarious reproduction in Zigi may result, ironically, from state policies to stabilize grain prices during periods of relative scarcity through the sale of less expensive imported grains, and may contribute in the long run to a further collapse of agricultural production. The possibility that migrations will provide profits in trade sufficient to purchase less expensive, imported grains may further undermine what appears to be a weakened commitment by plateau peasants to rainfed agricultural production. Domestic management of labour and land may suffer considerably, and with it, household crop production. We have the elements of a vicious cycle, having the potential to affect generations of peasant lives. Within the structure of household production, this deterioration of production promises to significantly increase the responsibility of women, whose burdens in production and biological and social reproduction (not to mention socialization and social control during the half-year or more when their husbands are gone) are already enormous. 27
NOTES
1. Capitalist development in peripheral areas of the world economy is determined largely by the requirements of capital within core states. During periods of colonial domination in the periphery, the reorientation of trade, production, and the transfer of labour power were effected largely by force. in The post-colonial period in much of the periphery brought little change coercion. orientation, although to a degree, economic replaced extra-economic replaced earlier A combination of dependence vis-a-vis former colonial powers the forms of domination while ensuring continuity of links well into replaced by a post-colonial period. Former relations of domination were A series of agreements, pacts, and accords for purposes of cooperation. considerable body of work has been devoted to features of peripheral 1972, capitalist development. See, among others, Afana, 1977; Amin, 1967, 1978; 1973, 1974a, 1974b, 1976; Gregory and Piche, 1978, 1979; Perez-Sainz, cf. Mandel, 1970: Petras, 1978; Prebisch, 1976; and Wallerstein, 1976, 1979; see, among 322; Marx, 1967: 566-567. For analysis of the Nigerien case, others, Higgott, 1979 and 1980.
We agree with Stichter's claim that [c] loser analysis of the complex and her statement variable processes of proletarianization is necessary," and with that:
Even if it is broadly true that the dominant tendency of capitalist development with migrant labour has been to undermine, to retard, but at the same time to conserve, peasant and subsistence production, still there are many variations on the theme (Stichter, 1985: 32-34).
may be very We would argue, however, that the appearances of conservation deceiving, and that the longevity of the concept in the analysis of capitalist by its development in the periphery of the world economy may be explained less nature capacity to promote successful grappling by analysts with the specific of agrarian change, than by the powerful image it projects of juxtaposed, is so contradictory processes. This power and the fact that concrete analysis terribly difficult may explain, in part, the frequency with which conservation dissolution has been invoked to "explain" agrarian change in non-capitalist social formations. In fact, the construct raises as many questions as it answers or appears to answer. 28
2. Zigi was one of two villages studied during research on peasant migrations and historical change in the Dosso area of Niger from September 1981 to March 1983. Multiple interviews were conducted with members of 26 Zigi households and focussed on issues central to production, investment, and social reproduction. Less frequent interviews with members of Zigi's remaining households provided additional information and helped to form the basis for characterizing the context of peasant survival which has been described at length elsewhere (Painter, 1985). The second village, Kuuka, was located at the edge of a dry river valley c. 20 kms west of Zigi, in a very different ecological setting, and thus presented a very different set of opportunities and constraints on peasant smallholders engaged in the struggle to survive and accumulate.
3. Clearly the link between class position and access to resources, including food, is critically important, although we do not address this issue in the case of Zigi. The reader's attention is called to Watts', 1978 study of Kaita in northern Nigeria, which is complemented by data from research done elsewhere in northern Nigeria and southern central Niger (cf. Sutter, 1982). Watts reports that 80% of Kaita households within the less wealthy strata had exhausted their food supplies as early as May of the year (Watts, 1983: 445-446, 578, n.83; cf. Curry, 1984: 277-288). It is not unreasonable to suggest that most if not all Zigi households are comparable in class position to those described by Watts as less wealthy.
4. Roughly 24% of the Niger Republic, consisting of a strip 200 to 250 kilometers wide in the extreme south of the country, receives more than 350 mm of rainfall during an average year. This zone contains most of the country's peasant smallholders and is considered by government planners to have the greatest potential for improved agricultural production (Painter, 1987a: 145).
5. Speaking of the impact of emigration to France from the Soninke area of the Senegal River Valley, Kane and Lericollais state that:
At the regional level, the net result is a decrease in cultivated surface areas and a decline in agricultural production; this is particularly noticeable in the river villages.... Migrants' earnings are used above all to pay seasonal agricultural labor and do not contribute to agricultural modernization (Kane and Lericollais, 1975: 186)
6. See Watts, among others, concerning the importance of off-farm income as a component in household prosperity (1983: 413; cf. Goodman and Redclift, 1982: 110). 29
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