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‘Opportunity Cost’ and Labour Migration: a Misinterpretation of Proletarianisation in Northern Ghana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

The orthodox tradition in studies and explanations of lab our migration has been to adopt the perspective of those who move. Such a framework of analysis has then addressed itself to (i) the reasons why individuals and groups decide to migrate, and (ii) the consequences. As regards the first issue, it has generally been accepted that the phenomenon of migration is in response to economic forces that push and/or pull people out of their own communities into others – the ‘invisible hand of the market’. As for the second issue, emphasis is placed on the problematics of adjustment or assimilation into the host community, and also on the new values, as well as the other stimulants – good or bad – that the returning migrants bring home.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

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page 658 note 1 In metropolitan capitalist systems, efficiency in performance is attained by improved techniques of output, including ‘scientific management’. Loyalty to the relations of production is usually attained indirectly at the ideological level, and the power of the media is used very subtly to achieve this end, as carefully demonstrated by Ewen, Stuart, Captains of Consciousness (New York, 1976).Google Scholar Other methods include the threat of dismissal and the creation of an unemployed reserve.

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page 661 note 2 Ibid. 56/1/109; and Plange, op. cit.

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page 662 note 1 Kay, op. cit. ch. 2.

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page 662 note 5 Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/84.

page 662 note 6 A distinction has to be made between ‘colonial’ and ‘natural’ resources, since the former are only a subset of the latter, namely those that a given colonial power, on the basis of its own economic and trading priorities, has decided to exploit. Plange, Nii-K, ‘The Naturalistic Fallacy at the Level of Underdevelopment’, in Review of African Political Economy (London),Google Scholar forthcoming.

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page 666 note 1 Gold Coast Blue Book, 1907.

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page 667 note 1 C. H. Armitage, Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories, to all District Commissioners, 29 September 1915; ibid.

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page 667 note 3 Ibid. 56/1/144.

page 668 note 1 Ibid. 56/1/84.

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page 671 note 2 Hart, Keith, ‘Migration and Tribal Identity among the Frafras of Ghana’, in The Journal of Asian and African Studies (Leiden), VI, 1971, pp. 2635.Google Scholar

page 671 note 3 The intention to return to natal communities has always been strong among immigrants, and many times became a substitute for seasonal migration. The desire then would be to stay longer than usual with the hope of realising some decent savings for the return. In my various interviews of migrant workers as a Research Assistant to Margaret Peil in Ghana between 1966–9, this desire was reiterated.

page 671 note 4 Hilton, T. E., ‘Population Growth and Distribution in Upper Region of Ghana’, in Caldwell, J. C. and Okonjo, C. (eds.), The Population of Tropical Africa (London, 1968), pp. 287 and 289.Google Scholar Other scholars have reached virtually the same conclusions – e.g. Hart, loc. cit. and Meyer Fortes, ‘Some Aspects of Migration and Mobility in Ghana’, in ibid. p. 1–20.

page 671 note 5 Plange, op. cit. Seasonal migration was more predominant among those who were employed on cocoa farms, and in the bungalows of colonial officials as servants.

page 672 note 1 Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/84.

page 672 note 2 Fortes, loc. cit.

page 673 note 1 Cliffe, loc. cit.

page 673 note 2 Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/46.

page 673 note 3 Ibid. 56/1/84 and 56/1/358. By way of sharp contrast, according to Elliott P. Skinner, ‘Labor Migration among the Mossi of the Upper Volta’, in Kuper (ed.), op. cit. pp. 68–9, the returning migrant, usually decked Out if costumes purchased from the South, and weighed down by the burden of gifts for friends and kin, distributed largess to the minstrels who were singing his praises and those of his ancestors. The songs, however, as explained during my fieldwork, recaptured the horrors of the mines and thanked the ancestors for having provided a safe return.

page 673 note 4 Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 1/124.

page 673 note 5 Murray and Crockett, op. cit. and Gold Coast Medical Reports (Accra, 1945).Google Scholar

page 674 note 1 Berg, loc. cit. pp. 172.

page 674 note 2 Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/85.

page 674 note 3 Ibid.

page 674 note 4 Caldwell, J. C., African Rural–Urban Migration: the movement to Ghana's towns (New York, 1969), pp. 153 and 155.Google Scholar

page 675 note 1 Laclau, op. cit.

page 675 note 2 Plange, op. cit.

page 676 note 1 Ibid. Kwaku op. cit. has reached similar conclusions in his study of peripheral under-development in the Volta Region of Ghana.