‘Opportunity Cost’ and Labour Migration: a Misinterpretation of Proletarianisation in Northern Ghana

Nii-K Plange

doi:10.1017/S0022278X00007497

‘Opportunity Cost’ and Labour Migration: a Misinterpretation of Proletarianisation in Northern Ghana

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008

Nii-K Plange

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The orthodox tradition in studies and explanations of lab our migration has been to adopt the perspective of those who move. Such a framework of analysis has then addressed itself to (i) the reasons why individuals and groups decide to migrate, and (ii) the consequences. As regards the first issue, it has generally been accepted that the phenomenon of migration is in response to economic forces that push and/or pull people out of their own communities into others – the ‘invisible hand of the market’. As for the second issue, emphasis is placed on the problematics of adjustment or assimilation into the host community, and also on the new values, as well as the other stimulants – good or bad – that the returning migrants bring home.

Type: Articles
Information: The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , December 1979 , pp. 655 - 676

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X00007497 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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^{page 655 note 1} Samuclson, P. A., Economics: an introductory analysis (New York, 1970 edn.), p. 449.Google Scholar

^{page 656 note 1} Berg, Elliot J., ‘The Economics of the Migrant Labor System’, in Kuper, Hilda (ed.), Urbanization and Migration in West Africa (Berkeley, 1965), pp. 164.Google Scholar

^{page 656 note 2} Nabilla, J. S., ‘Rural Depopulation in Northern Ghana with Specific Reference to the Migration of FraFra People’, West African Regional Seminar on Population Studies, Legon, 30 11–4 12 1972.Google Scholar

^{page 657 note 1} See Arrighi, Giovanni, ‘Labour Supplies in Historical Perspective: a study of the proletarianization of the African peasantry in Rhodesia’, in Arrighi, and Saul, John S., Essays on the Political Economy of Africa (New York and London, 1973), pp. 180–234;Google ScholarMamdani, M., Polities and Class Formation in Uganda (London, 1976);Google Scholar and Plange, Nii, ‘Colonialism and Underdevelopment in Northern Ghana: the political sociology of the colonial situation, 1900–1950’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1976.Google Scholar

^{page 657 note 2} Wayne, J. has argued this point in ‘Colonialism and Underdevelopment in Kigoma Region, Tanzania’, in Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology (Montreal), XII, 3, 1975, pp. 316–32.Google Scholar Other areas of Africa have been similarly documented – e.g. Wolff, Richard D., The Economics of Colonialism: Britain and Kenya, 1870–1913 (New Haven and London, 1974).Google Scholar

^{page 658 note 1} In metropolitan capitalist systems, efficiency in performance is attained by improved techniques of output, including ‘scientific management’. Loyalty to the relations of production is usually attained indirectly at the ideological level, and the power of the media is used very subtly to achieve this end, as carefully demonstrated by Ewen, Stuart, Captains of Consciousness (New York, 1976).Google Scholar Other methods include the threat of dismissal and the creation of an unemployed reserve.

In colonial economic systems, the existence of pre-capitalist patterns of production made the prospect of firing futile because individuals and groups usually possessed other means of survival. However, labour-intensive techniques of production often necessitated the use of force to attain the required efficiency and loyalty – sometimes this also involved the creation of inadequate and infertile ‘native reserves’, which then forced individuals to move out in search of cash to pay taxes.

^{page 659 note 1} Marx, Karl, Capital, Vol. 1 (Moscow, 1971 edn.), pp. 669–70.Google Scholar

^{page 659 note 2} See Kay, G. B. (ed.), The Political Economy of Colonialism in Ghana: a collection of documents and statistics, 1900–1960 (Cambridge, 1972), p. 210.Google Scholar

^{page 659 note 3} Plange, op. cit. especially ch. 3.

^{page 660 note 1} See Szerezewski, R., Structural Change in the Economy of Ghana, 1891–1911 (London, 1965),Google Scholar ‘Introduction’.

^{page 660 note 2} See Hutchful, E., ‘Politics of De-Militarization in Ghana’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1973,Google Scholar and ‘Political Economy of the Military Intervention in Ghana’, Canadian Association of African Studies Conference, Sherbrooke, 1977.

^{page 660 note 3} Levitson, N., Ancient Ghana and Mali (London, 1970),Google Scholar and Plange, op. cit.

^{page 661 note 1} Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/84.

^{page 661 note 2} Ibid. 56/1/109; and Plange, op. cit.

^{page 661 note 3} For example, Thompson Moir and Galloway Co.; Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/84.

^{page 662 note 1} Kay, op. cit. ch. 2.

^{page 662 note 2} Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/144 and 264.

^{page 662 note 3} See Kwaku, K., ‘The Political Economy of Peripheral Underdevelopment’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1975.Google Scholar

^{page 662 note 4} From 1900 to 1907 the annual production of rubber and palm oil both averaged around 250,000 tons, while the output of cocoa jumped from 27,000 to 515,000 tons; Gold Coast Blue Book, 1907.

^{page 662 note 5} Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/84.

^{page 662 note 6} A distinction has to be made between ‘colonial’ and ‘natural’ resources, since the former are only a subset of the latter, namely those that a given colonial power, on the basis of its own economic and trading priorities, has decided to exploit. Plange, Nii-K, ‘The Naturalistic Fallacy at the Level of Underdevelopment’, in Review of African Political Economy (London),Google Scholar forthcoming.

^{page 662 note 7} Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/84.

^{page 663 note 1} Brimah, J. A. and Goody, J. R., The Struggle for Salaga (London, 1967), p. 62.Google Scholar

^{page 663 note 2} Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/44 and 369.

^{page 663 note 3} Ibid. 56/1/44.

^{page 663 note 4} Stichter, Sharon, ‘The Formation of a Working Class in Kenya’, in Sandbrook, Richard and Cohen, Robin (eds.), The Development of an African Working Class: studies in class formation and action (London, 1975), p. 24.Google Scholar

^{page 663 note 5} Kimble, David, A Political History of Ghana: the rise of Gold Coast nationalism, 1850–1928 (Oxford, 1963), p. 42.Google Scholar

^{page 663 note 6} For an analysis of what happened in England during the formative years of capitalism, see Legros, Dominique, ‘Chance, Necessity, and the Mode of Production: a Marxist critique of cultural evolutionism’, in American Anthropologist (Washington), 79, 1977, pp. 26–41.Google Scholar In the United States, according to Herbert Gutman, the process of proletarianisation was very violent, accentuated by the constant use of military and police power; ‘Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America’, in American Historical Review (Washington), 78, 3, 06 1973, pp. 531–88.Google Scholar

^{page 663 note 7} Marx, op. cit. p. 703.

^{page 664 note 1} Stichter, loc. cit. p. 25.

^{page 664 note 2} Transport Department. Report (Accra, 1908), referred to by Kimble, op. cit. p. 57.Google Scholar

^{page 664 note 3} Murray, A. J. and Crockett, J. A., Report on Silicosis and Tuberculosis Among Mine Workers of the Gold Coast (Accra, 1945).Google Scholar

^{page 665 note 1} Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/84.

^{page 665 note 2} Ibid. 56/1/82.

^{page 665 note 3} For the details, see Plange, op. cit.

^{page 665 note 4} Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/84.

^{page 666 note 1} Gold Coast Blue Book, 1907.

^{page 666 note 2} Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 1/24.

^{page 666 note 3} Mines Department. Annual Report, 1913–14 (Accra, 1914).Google Scholar

^{page 666 note 4} See Hill, Polly, The Migrant Cocoa-Farmers of Southern Ghana (Cambridge, 1963).Google Scholar

^{page 666 note 5} Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/84.

^{page 667 note 1} C. H. Armitage, Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories, to all District Commissioners, 29 September 1915; ibid.

^{page 667 note 2} Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/84.

^{page 667 note 3} Ibid. 56/1/144.

^{page 668 note 1} Ibid. 56/1/84.

^{page 668 note 2} Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/144.

^{page 668 note 3} Thomas, Roger C., ‘Forced Labour in British West Africa: the case of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, 1906–1927’, in The Journal of African History (Cambridge), XIV, 1, 1973, pp. 79 and 103.Google Scholar

^{page 669 note 1} See Therborn, Göran, Science, Class and Society: on the formation of sociology and historical materialism (London edn. 1977), pp. 110 and 227–315:Google Scholar ‘To the class to which economists belong, this economic common sense may be easily understandable. To a class that experiences the capitalist market economy as poverty, oppression, and periodic unemployment… any attempt to portray the economy as, by and large, based on free and rational human action may appear preposterous or blatantly apologetic’.

^{page 669 note 2} Brett, E. A., Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa: the politics of economic change 1919–1939 (London and New York, 1973), p. 285.Google Scholar

^{page 670 note 1} Marx, op. cit. Vol. 2, p. 36.

^{page 670 note 2} Cf.Avineri, Shlomo, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (London, 1968).CrossRef Google Scholar

^{page 670 note 3} Lenin, V. I., ‘Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism’, in Collected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow, 1970 edn.), pp. 667–763.Google Scholar

^{page 670 note 4} Frank, André Gunder, Sociology of Development and Underdevelopment of Sociology – Latin America, Underdevelopment or Revolution? (New York, 1969);Google ScholarAmin, Samir, Accumulation on a World Scale, Vols. 1 and 11 (New York, 1974), p. 74,Google Scholar and also ‘Underdevelopment and Dependence in Black Africa’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), X, 4, 12 1972, pp. 503–24.Google Scholar

^{page 670 note 5} Laclau, E., ‘Feudalism and Capitalism in Latin America’, in his Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (London edn. 1977).Google Scholar

^{page 670 note 6} Cliffe, Lionel, ‘Rural Political Economy of Africa’, in Gutkind, Peter C. W. and Wallerstein, Immanuel (eds.), The Political Economy of Contemporary Africa (Beverly Hills and London, 1976), pp. 112–30.Google Scholar

^{page 671 note 1} Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/46, and Nabilla, op. cit.

^{page 671 note 2} Hart, Keith, ‘Migration and Tribal Identity among the Frafras of Ghana’, in The Journal of Asian and African Studies (Leiden), VI, 1971, pp. 26–35.Google Scholar

^{page 671 note 3} The intention to return to natal communities has always been strong among immigrants, and many times became a substitute for seasonal migration. The desire then would be to stay longer than usual with the hope of realising some decent savings for the return. In my various interviews of migrant workers as a Research Assistant to Margaret Peil in Ghana between 1966–9, this desire was reiterated.

^{page 671 note 4} Hilton, T. E., ‘Population Growth and Distribution in Upper Region of Ghana’, in Caldwell, J. C. and Okonjo, C. (eds.), The Population of Tropical Africa (London, 1968), pp. 287 and 289.Google Scholar Other scholars have reached virtually the same conclusions – e.g. Hart, loc. cit. and Meyer Fortes, ‘Some Aspects of Migration and Mobility in Ghana’, in ibid. p. 1–20.

^{page 671 note 5} Plange, op. cit. Seasonal migration was more predominant among those who were employed on cocoa farms, and in the bungalows of colonial officials as servants.

^{page 672 note 1} Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/84.

^{page 672 note 2} Fortes, loc. cit.

^{page 673 note 1} Cliffe, loc. cit.

^{page 673 note 2} Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/46.

^{page 673 note 3} Ibid. 56/1/84 and 56/1/358. By way of sharp contrast, according to Elliott P. Skinner, ‘Labor Migration among the Mossi of the Upper Volta’, in Kuper (ed.), op. cit. pp. 68–9, the returning migrant, usually decked Out if costumes purchased from the South, and weighed down by the burden of gifts for friends and kin, distributed largess to the minstrels who were singing his praises and those of his ancestors. The songs, however, as explained during my fieldwork, recaptured the horrors of the mines and thanked the ancestors for having provided a safe return.

^{page 673 note 4} Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 1/124.

^{page 673 note 5} Murray and Crockett, op. cit. and Gold Coast Medical Reports (Accra, 1945).Google Scholar

^{page 674 note 1} Berg, loc. cit. pp. 172.

^{page 674 note 2} Ghana National Archives, A.D.M. 56/1/85.

^{page 674 note 3} Ibid.

^{page 674 note 4} Caldwell, J. C., African Rural–Urban Migration: the movement to Ghana's towns (New York, 1969), pp. 153 and 155.Google Scholar

^{page 675 note 1} Laclau, op. cit.

^{page 675 note 2} Plange, op. cit.

^{page 676 note 1} Ibid. Kwaku op. cit. has reached similar conclusions in his study of peripheral under-development in the Volta Region of Ghana.

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‘Opportunity Cost’ and Labour Migration: a Misinterpretation of Proletarianisation in Northern Ghana

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