Worker-Peasants and Farmer-Housewives in Africa: The Debate about ‘Committed’ Farmers, Access to Land and Agricultural Production
Author(s)
Potts, Deborah
Abstract
In much of southern Africa, migrancy has for generations been incorporated into the livelihoods systems of millions of rural families. The regional dimensions vary but, particularly where there was very inequitable division of land between racial groups during the era of white minority regimes, the dependence of rural households on migrants’ remittances is fundamental to their survival. From a structural perspective, the impact of such migration has often been characterised as creating worker-peasants and farmer housewives. The impact of these patterns on agricultural productivity and the environment is frequently deemed to be very negative, from a variety of theoretical and policy perspectives. Because the patterns are predicated on migrants retaining rights to rural land in rural areas, arguments are often made that migrants should lose their land rights, thereby being forced to choose either to be ‘committed farmers’ or ‘permanent urbanites’. This paper argues that such views are frequently based on development narratives about the problems caused for agriculture by migrancy which ignore, or misunderstand crucial aspects of the relationship between migrants and the land. This paper attempts to analyse these narratives, and to offer an alternative perspective on the issue, drawing on empirical research in Zimbabwe and literature on migrants and agriculture in various African countries. To some extent, concerns about migrants and their links to the land derive from particular scholastic traditions associated with social science approaches to the study of the southern African region. The literature on rural-urban migration and rural-urban linkages in the form of land holdings for most of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, for a variety of reasons, is much less likely to view migrants’ attachment to their land as problematic.
