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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Our Parents Went to Johannesburg: Labour Migration and Social Adulthood in Western Zambia, 1900-1990
| Panel |
62. Copper and Migrants: Towards a social history of industrialisation and social change in central Africa 1890-1990
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| Paper ID | 560 |
| Author(s) |
Barrett, Michael
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | Few aspects of industrialisation in Central Africa have had a larger impact on rural societies than the introduction of the labour migration system in the beginning of the 20th century. Taking Western Zambia as an example, the social consequences for villages and kin groups of the large-scale migration of young men, many of whom failed to return home, were considerable. Patterns of marriage, subsistence, authority and gender relations were transformed and reinterpreted by returning migrants, often resulting in severe generational strife. According to some observers (see e.g. van Horn 1977; Frankenberg 1978), labour migration also constituted the major impetus for the transformation of (what was then called) Barotseland from a self-sufficient economic region into an economic backwater, a labour reserve for the mines and commercial farms of southern Rhodesia.
This paper addresses the different themes of opportunity for young people that existed in two separate periods in the local history of Kalabo District in Zambia’s Western Province: the labour migration era (1900-1965) and the post-independence ‘boom’ and ‘bust’ years (1965-1990). Although connected, the two periods present somewhat divergent (social and political) relationships between the rural economy and the process of regional industrialisation. Through these temporalities in the political economy of rural Kalabo, and through life histories of some of its inhabitants, I will shed light on the different livelihood, marital, and migration strategies that appeared for young people and that shaped their ability to attain social adulthood.
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