Migrant Laborers

Description

This book surveys the literature on labour migration in east, west and southern Africa and interprets it from a political economy perspective. It addresses the controversies as to the origins of migrancy and its effects on the rural economy, emphasising the differences in the response of various African precapitalist societies to wage labour, and the regional variations in the effects on the rural economy and on the division of labour within the rural household. Male migrants' experiences with forced labour, recruitment systems, advance payments, and compound controls are described, and the rather different character of women's migration is examined. A central concern is the development of migrant workers' consciousness and forms of resistance. Labour protest among dockers, miners and domestic workers is examined and, finally, the persistence of migrancy in South Africa today is contrasted with the decline of labour migrancy in other parts of the continent.