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 Thomas M. Painter is with the Project on African Agriculture: Crisis and Transformation, Social Science Research Council, New York, and is a DPP Research Associate. This is a revised version of a paper entitled 'Surviving in Zigi: Notes on Peasants' Lives in Plateau Village in Western Niger', prepared for the panel on Persistent Structures of Inequality in African Political Economies at the 28th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in New Orleans, Louisiana, November 23-26, 1985. I would like to thank J.H. Mittelman, panel chair, and Joel Samoff, discussant, for their comments on paper. I would also like to express my appreciation for questions and issues raised by two anonymous reviewers of a revised draft submitted to DPP. The paper is based on research done in Niger for purposes of a doctoral dissertation in sociology and development anthropology at the State University of New York, Binghamton, New York. I would like to thank the authorities of the Niger government for permitting me to carry out research in Zigi, and express my appreciation to the good people of Zigi for their patience and help during my stay there. Financial support for the research programme was provided by an International Doctoral Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, by Grant No. SES-8016409 from the National Science Foundation, and by contributions and loans from my family and several kind friends. Their support and good faith are most gratefully 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