Migrant Labour and Changing Family Structure in the Rural Periphery of Southern Africa¶
Colin Murray (1980). Migrant Labour and Changing Family Structure in the Rural Periphery of Southern Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2. Taylor & Francis.
| Type | journal article |
| Scope | Wider apartheid literature |
| Method | synthesis review |
| Period studied | 1871–1979 |
| Regions | Lesotho, Botswana, Bantustans, Southern Africa |
| Themes | mining migrant labour, bantustans removals influx, demography urbanisation, inequality poverty unemployment, comparative theory, origins segregation |
| Citation key | murray1980 |
Argument¶
Murray argues that the apparent conflict between studies that find migrant labour destroys family life and studies that find tribal cohesion persists is a false dichotomy produced by functionalist paradigms and by mixing levels of analysis. Evidence from Botswana and Lesotho shows that the agnatic residential structure of communities persists while conjugal instability, illegitimacy, desertion and child fostering rise. Both are rooted in the political economy of the labour reserve: influx control and land shortage fix residence, while migrancy disrupts conjugal ties. He criticises the nuclear versus extended family stereotypes and doubts that the 'dissolution/conservation contradiction' (Wolpe) adds more than rhetoric. Continuity of custom, such as high bridewealth, must be analysed as part of underlying structural transformation, since bridewealth now reflects the need for manpower in an impoverished rural proletariat.
Evidence and method¶
Schapera's 1934-35 ward surveys at Mochudi and Serowe and the 1973 Roberts restudy of Rampedi ward; the 1971 Botswana National Census (via Cooper); a 1974 Lesotho sample of 150 households from the author's own fieldwork; the Keiskammahoek Rural Survey; ethnographies by Watson, van Velsen, Kuper, Kooijman and others; and customary law sources (Laws of Lerotholi).
Place in the debates¶
- Effects of labour migration on rural family and tribal cohesion (destruction versus persistence) (see The mine migrant labour system: origins, recruitment, foreign labour and stabilisation). Rejects the either/or framing; both dissolution of conjugal ties and persistence of agnatic structure are real, and both stem from the political economy of the labour reserve.
- Wolpe's 'dissolution/conservation' contradiction and articulation of modes of production (see Cheap labour thesis and the function of the reserves). Sceptical; finds the formulation paradoxical and possibly merely rhetorical, and suspects it carries an 'economism'. Prefers to say that obligations have broken down and the conjugal tie has been burdened.
- Extended versus nuclear family as analytical stereotype. Both are ideological stereotypes; neither should be the unit of analysis. Family structure should be studied as temporal processes within the developmental cycle and differentiation.
- Underdevelopment of the periphery as a corollary of core development (new historiography) (see Cheap labour thesis and the function of the reserves). Endorses the periphery-core framework as the proper basis, but wants anthropological fieldwork to give it empirical content.
Findings¶
-
Migrant labour was seen by Monica Wilson as the single most destructive force for the African family system. (p. 3)
Migrant (oscillating) labour continuing over a long period of time and involving a substantial proportion of the population is, I believe, the single most destructive force in our society
-
The 1973 restudy of Rampedi ward found the agnatic core durable after nearly forty years, with the ward much larger. (p. 8)
In 1973 there were thirty-three households, with a population of ap- proximately 300 people. No fewer than twenty-six household heads, of whom two were women, belonged to the same agnatic core lineage.
-
The same restudy found much higher unmarried motherhood alongside agnatic continuity. (p. 8)
a high proportion of adult women (40 out of 73) who had never married; and, thirdly, a high proportion of children (65 out of 162) born to such women.
-
Botswana's 1971 census showed only 43 per cent of mothers aged 15 or over were married. (p. 9)
of all women aged 15 or over who had children, 43 per cent were married, 36 per cent were single, 7 per cent were divorced or separated, and 14 per cent were widows.
-
Half of sampled Lesotho households in 1974 were three-generational, showing children reared by grandparents. (p. 9)
75 out of a sample of 150 households in Lesotho in 1974 were found to comprise three or more generations
-
Residential stability reflects influx control and land shortage, whereas conjugal breakdown reflects migrancy; both are rooted in the labour reserve's political economy. (p. 10)
The stability of residential alignments in many areas of the periphery is directly related to the severity of South African influx control and of land shortage.
-
Migration creates a contradiction in family survival: the migrant's absence supports the family economically but undermines conjugal stability. (p. 13)
A man's absence as a migrant labourer is a condition of his family's survival. But his absence also undermines the conjugal stability from which his family derives its identity.
-
Appeals to the 'extended family' let employers excuse low wages and absent social security. (p. 14)
in default of decent wages or adequate social security arrangements. There is, as the quotation from Anthony Barker suggests, very little evidence to support such a view.
-
Lesotho evidence shows migrant earnings concentrating within the migrant's own household, with households lacking wage income severely disadvantaged. (p. 15)
the earnings of migrant labourers are increasingly con- centrated within their own households and that households without direct access to an income from wage labour are severely disadvantaged.
-
Continuity of custom such as bridewealth masks structural transformation into a monogamous, impoverished rural proletariat. (p. 19)
High levels of bohali today reflect the importance of access to able-bodied manpower in a monogamous and impoverished rural proletariat.
Evidence ledger¶
Sources used¶
| Source | Kind | Period | How used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Schapera's 1934-35 residential surveys of two Tswana wards (Rampedi ward, Mochudi; a ward in Serowe), published as 'The social structure of the Tswana ward', Bantu Studies 9, 1935 | author survey or fieldwork | 1934-1935 | Provides the 1934 baseline of ward composition, household size and illegitimacy against which later change is measured. |
| Roberts' 1973 restudy of Rampedi ward, Mochudi (Schapera and Roberts, 'Rampedi Revisited', Africa 45 No 3, 1975) | author survey or fieldwork | 1973 | Shows durability of agnatic ward structure alongside high mobility, many never-married women and many children born to them. |
| Botswana National Census of 1971 (as calculated in D. Cooper, National Migration Study Working Paper No 1, 1979) | population census | 1971 (paper 1979) | Marital status of women with children (43% married, 36% single) shown to be consistent with the Mochudi findings. |
| Murray's Lesotho household sample, 1974 (150 households), 'Keeping House in Lesotho', Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge 1976 | author survey or fieldwork | 1974 | Shows the prevalence of three-generation households and links through women versus men, and the persistence of agnatic residential alignments. |
| Keiskammahoek Rural Survey, Vols II and III (Houghton and Walton; Wilson, Kaplan, Maki and Walton), 1952 | author survey or fieldwork | 1949-50 | Cited for the destructive consequences of migration for family life, the Kinship Composition table, and women's economic status. |
| Schapera, Migrant Labour and Tribal Life (report to the Bechuanaland Administration), 1947 | commission or official report | 1940s | Evidence that prolonged male absence is associated with conjugal breakdown and desertion, and with greater freedom for wives. |
| Morojele, 1960 Agricultural Census: Basutoland, eight parts (Maseru: Government Printer, 1962) | agricultural census | 1960 | Used as an example of unexplained household/family distinctions that treat the nuclear family as an analytical unit. |
| Ashton (1946) and Sheddick (1948) surveys of Southern Sotho wards; Sheddick, Land Tenure in Basutoland (HMSO 1954) | author survey or fieldwork | 1940s | Cited as comparative ward studies modelled on Schapera; Sheddick's explanation of child-rearing by grandparents is rejected. |
| E. Gordon, The Women Left Behind: wives of migrant workers of Lesotho (ILO, Dec 1978) | commission or official report | 1978 | Used to show that the view that families have adjusted to migration is taken seriously in ILO-funded research. |
| Kooijman, Social and Economic Change in a Tswana Village (Bokaa), 1978 | author survey or fieldwork | 1970s | Supports the claim that paternal and maternal kin merge into a single kindred in outlying Tswana communities. |
| Laws of Lerotholi (Basutoland National Council codification of customary law, 1903) | legislation gazette | 1903 onward | Shows that house-property complex provisions are codified and still applied in the courts. |
| Comaroff, Ph.D. thesis (Barolong Boo Ratshidi) 1973 and Curtis, Analysis of Development Agencies in Agricultural Communities in Botswana (unpublished report) | secondary literature compilation | 1970s | Cited as reporting the same three-generation household form with an unmarried daughter and her children. |
| L. Duvoisin quotation in Germond (ed.), Chronicles of Basutoland (Morija, 1967) | newspapers periodicals | 1885 | Contemporary account of wealth differentiation among polygynous aristocrats in Basutoland in 1885. |
Inference¶
Quantification: Illustrative figures.
Argument by selective review and reinterpretation of existing community studies (Tswana wards, Lesotho household sample, Keiskammahoek), with a before/after ward comparison (1934 vs 1973) and conceptual critique drawing on political-economy theory; no new systematic dataset.
Key claims¶
| Claim | Basis | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| The agnatic structure of Tswana ward residence persisted between 1934 and 1973 despite large demographic change. (p. 145) | Schapera's 1934-35 survey compared with Roberts' 1973 restudy of Rampedi ward (16 vs 33 households). | Partial data |
| Unmarried women and children born to them increased substantially between 1934 and 1973, indicating conjugal instability tied to migrancy. (p. 146) | Rampedi ward counts (40 of 73 adult women never married; 65 of 162 children) versus Schapera's 1934 counts; Botswana 1971 census figures. | Partial data |
| Three-generation households including unmarried daughters with children are common in Botswana, Lesotho and the Bantustans, and children are reared by grandparents because parents are absent on migrant labour. (p. 146) | Murray's 1974 Lesotho sample of 150 households plus secondary reports from Botswana; asserted reasoning against Sheddick. | Partial data |
| Stable residential alignments and unstable conjugal relations both stem from the political economy of the labour reserve (influx control, land shortage, migrant labour), so 'dissolution' and 'conservation' are not truly contradictory. (p. 147) | Interpretive synthesis of the ward studies and Lesotho sample, without independent data on influx control or land allocation. | Asserted |
| There is very little evidence that the 'extended family' accommodates the sick, unemployed and elderly in lieu of decent wages or social security. (p. 151) | Critique of the ILO hypothesis and Barker's quotation; no systematic evidence presented. | Asserted |
| Migrant earnings in Lesotho are increasingly concentrated within the migrant's own household, and households without wage income are severely disadvantaged. (p. 152) | Murray's own review of Lesotho evidence, cited but not shown here. | Asserted |
| Persistent high bridewealth (bohali) in Lesotho has changed function from aristocratic patronage in the mid-19th century to securing manpower for an impoverished rural proletariat today. (p. 156) | Murray's earlier article on bridewealth, Duvoisin 1885 quotation and customary law sources; argued rather than demonstrated here. | Illustrative or anecdotal |
The author's caveats¶
Acknowledges that reconstructing the 'past' is contingent on ignorance of pre-colonial conditions and on synchronic ethnographies, and that one ward in Kgatleng is not representative of the periphery as a whole. Notes that a survey taken at a slightly different time would show a different resident population, and that the National Migration Study in Botswana is expected to clarify movements.
Gaps in the evidence¶
The argument rests on a few small-community studies (two Tswana wards, one 150-household Lesotho sample) and cannot support claims about the periphery as a whole. Representative panel or census microdata on household composition, migrant remittances, and marital histories over time, linked to recruitment and influx control data, would test the claims better. Some of this existed then (national censuses, Lesotho agricultural census, the Botswana National Migration Study), and the archival data on recruitment and land allocation are available now.
Replicability: Data poorly documented.