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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
This note attempts to evaluate the more significant studies on migratory labour in Africa,1 and to suggest some of the information needed not only to advance knowledge but also to provide a basis for governmental policy.
There are two important elements of migratory labour as discussed in this note: the impermanent attachment to the labour force, and the absence from home. An increasing proportion of ‘wanderers who travel in search of wage labor’ (Carter Goodrich, ‘Migratory Labor’, in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, New York, Macmillan, 1933) become, at least during their individual working lives, permanent members of the wage labour force.2 Petty traders, as well as the still frequently expatriate high-level manpower, who manifest some of the characteristics of migrant labour, are excluded from any discussion in this note.
Page 521 note 1 A detailed bibliography, compiled by the author in November 1961, will be found in: Commission for Technical Co-operation in Africa South of the Sahara, Migrant Labour in Africa South of the Sahara (London, 1961), section 4.Google Scholar
Page 521 note 2 See also Goodrich, Carter, The Economic Transformation of Bolivia (Ithaca, New York, 1955).Google Scholar
Page 521 note 3 Cf. Scott, Franklin D., ‘The Study of the Effects of Emigration’, in Scandinavian Economic History Review (Stockholm), VIII, 2, 1961, pp. 160–3.Google Scholar
Page 522 note 1 Browne, G. St. J. Orde, Labour Conditions in East Africa (London, H.M.S.O., 1946), p. 5, mentions target workers;Google Scholar and Carpenter, F. W., in Report on the Commitlee on African Wages (Kenya, Government Printer, 1954), has a chapter on ‘The Migrant or Target Worker’, pp. 13–15.Google Scholar
Page 523 note 1 C.C.T.A./C.S.A. have circulated 23 technical documents on their ‘Study of Migrations in Weest Africa’, Joint Project no. 3, Series MIG (61), Of particuatr importance is the working document for the symposium, no 2. Reports and recommendations make up their L (61) 31. More accessible is my brief note the symposium, in Africa (London), XXXI, 07 1961, p. 282.Google Scholar
Page 528 note 1 Cf. Clark, M. Gardner, ‘Government Restrictions on Labor Mobility in Italy’, in Industrial and Labor Relations Review (Ithaca, New York), VIII, 1, 10 1954, pp. 3–18.Google Scholar
Page 529 note 1 E.g. ‘There is no statutory provision made for social security schemes in the Gold Coast. Social security is however firmly entrenched in the local pattern of tribal and family relationships.’ Report of Labour Department for the Year 1950–51 (Accra, Government Printer, 1952), p. 7.Google Scholar
