PART II CASE-STUDY: GUINEA-BISSAU
9. Conclusions of the case-study
9.1.2 Migration and its effects
One of the most important conclusions yielded by the comparative analysis of our two case-study sites is that migration from what may appear as quite similar contexts of origin (two rural communities in the same small country) can take on very different qualitative characteristics, which in turn decisively influence the feed-back effects of migration upon those villages. Migration may be extremely prevalent as a livelihood strategy in both contexts (with 78% of the households in Caiomete and 72% of the ones in Braima Sori currently participating in it), but the gender profile of the migrants, the geographical patterns of the migration flows and the modes of socioprofessional incorporation in their respective host contexts differ substantially between the two villages.
This shows very clearly that individual decisions to migrate do not arise in a social and historical vacuum; rather, they take place in the context of chains, networks and systems that are characterised by considerable inertia, have their roots in history (whether by structural ‘necessity’ or by accident), and operate by changing the field of information, opportunities and resources available to potential subsequent migrants. Intra-national migration flows from the two villages have followed relatively similar logics, mostly consisting of rural-urban migration to Bissau or the respective regional capital, to study, seek employment or engage in trade, as a consequence of the urban concentration of public services and economic opportunities. In both cases, this has doubtless accelerated in the post-independence period, as a consequence of the deepening of rural-urban imbalances that has characterised Guinea-Bissau’s post-independence development
288 pattern. With regard to international migration, however, we find much more pronounced differences.
Current international migration from Caiomete reflects the superposition of two main migration dynamics. The first one is specifically associated with the Manjaco ethnic group and the northern region of Guinea-Bissau, dates back to long ago and was originally associated with the demand for labour in the context of groundnut plantations in Southern Senegal. These agricultural labour migration flows subsequently expanded both in terms of occupations (to include sailors, domestic workers, etc.) and geographically (extending to France, Senegal’s colonial metropolis at the time), thus giving rise to an intercontinental Guinea-Bissau–Senegal–France migration system that has reached its maturity long ago.
The second of these international migration dynamics is more recent and more widely shared with other contexts in Guinea-Bissau, consisting of post-colonial migration to Portugal, typically via Bissau rather than Senegal and France.
In the case of Braima Sori, the local history of international migration appears to have been brought on by relatively more ‘accidental’ factors, to the extent that there is no international migration system linking the region as a whole with Europe on a scale comparable with that of the Manjaco. However, it was nevertheless shaped by structural factors as well. The successful migration to Portugal by a few pioneers in the 1980s, in a context of economic expansion and large public works programmes in the latter country, enabled those pioneers to thrive, and then to encourage and support the subsequent migration of relatives and acquaintances. This process acquired significant momentum throughout the following decades, and it was only in the late 2000s that the onset of economic stagnation in Portugal brought on a decrease in international out-migration and an increase in return migration flows. As one of the respondents to the survey vividly put it,
“the effects of the economic crisis are felt more severely over here than in Europe”.
There are therefore both differences and similarities between the migration dynamics in the two villages: both have been affected by wider structural processes taking place elsewhere, but these structural processes have been different in each case – and so have the local responses and consequences. The window of opportunity created by migration in each of these two local contexts has also taken on a different character:
whereas in the case of Braima Sori international migration appeared as a promising avenue for livelihood diversification, upwards social mobility and the accumulation of wealth, in the case of Caiomete (or at least for most of its migrants) it has often constituted a way out of a
289 constraining context characterised by the scarcity of land and livelihoods, and by social structures regarded as oppressive180.
The aforementioned processes and dynamics thus concur to account for the current quantitative and qualitative features of the migration flows and stocks originating in the two villages. In the case of Caiomete, as a broad generalisation, what we find is relatively feminised migration to relatively less affluent contexts, followed by less successful socio-professional trajectories and undertaken by individuals that maintain relatively weaker ties to their households of origin. In the case of Braima Sori, by contrast, we find more successful migration trajectories in more affluent contexts, by mostly male individuals with much more effectual linkages to their households of origin. All of these factors have crystallised, among other things, in the relative prevalence and volume of remittances to the two villages, and in the welfare effects of the latter. Thus it is that despite the greater prevalence of collective ‘development’ initiatives by the migrants from Caiomete in the context of their HTAs in Portugal and France, Braima Sori has seen its standard of living improve as a consequence of migration to a much more significant extent than Caiomete.
180 For example, relatively frequent reference was made in the context of the survey and qualitative interviews to migration by young women to Senegal in order to avoid or escape arranged marriages.
290 Migration
Caiomete Braima Sori
History of international migration likely to date back to the early 20th Century
History of international migration dates back to the 1980s
78% of the households currently participate in migration
72% of the households currently participate in migration
Main destinations: Bissau (38%), Senegal (22%), Portugal (18%), elsewhere in the
region (13%), France (8%)
Main destinations: Portugal (34%), Bissau (21%), elsewhere in the region (16%), neighbouring region (Bafatá) (9%), Senegal
(8%)
Balanced sex-ratio among migrants Overwhelmingly male migrants 72% of the households include former
migrants
44% of the households include former migrants
Prevalence of remittances: 24% of all the households, 30% of those with current
migrants
Prevalence of remittances: 61% of all the households, 85% of those with current
migrants Substantial evidence of collective initiatives
by migrants in the village (road maintenance, new school, new healthcare
centre)
Little evidence of collective initiatives by migrants in the village (collective financing
of repair works in local mosque) Current participation in migration negatively
associated with asset ownership
Current participation in migration positively but moderately associated with asset
ownership Past participation in migration not
associated with asset ownership
Past participation in migration strongly and positively associated with asset ownership Current remittances positively associated
with asset ownership
Current remittances positively associated with asset ownership
Table 9.3 Caiomete and Braima Sori: a comparative summary of key features with respect to migration and its effects upon welfare
In the meantime, we explicitly set out to ascertain the development effects of migration in these two villages in a more structural sense than just welfare improvement, and this has led us to look into the realm of production and how it is that the dynamics brought on by migration appear to have affected productive activities and relations. In this respect, too, we have found important differences between the two villages that can be accounted for by reference to the features that we have been recalling and highlighting throughout this chapter – in terms of livelihoods and production, on the one hand, and the features of migration, on the other.
Thus, in the case of Caiomete it is difficult to identify any substantial structural effects of migration upon production. As a consequence of the likely ‘negative’ self- selection of the migrants, the characteristics of their migration trajectories, the relative weakness of their economic linkages with their households of origin and the constraints to
291 upwards class differentiation in this village context, we find that migration does not appear to have brought on any substantial facilitating effects upon either the intensification and modernisation of production or the expansion of social-productive arrangements of a proto-capitalist kind. The statistical associations between past migration, present migration and remittances, on the one hand, and crop outputs and the demand for labour, on the other, are weak and inconsistent. Based both on that and on qualitative evidence, no convincing link between migration/remittances and the expansion/modernisation of agricultural activity along capitalist lines can be identified. If anything, it seems that the out- migration of many individuals from some of the poorest households may in fact have reduced the local labour supply and thereby further constrained the transition to capitalist forms of organisation of production, even though we have also seen that the constraints to that transition largely lay elsewhere in this particular context.
The qualitative and quantitative evidence from Braima Sori makes for a different story. The very significant level of remittances sent back to the village have not only enabled a substantial improvement in terms of standard of living, but also enabled some of the remittance-recipient households to engage more extensively in the hiring-in of agricultural labourers, especially from outside the village. However, there is some ambiguity to these results. Specifically, it seems that the positive statistical association between current migration and remittances, on the one hand, and the demand for labour, on the other, does not quite translate into greater crop outputs by remittance-recipient households. This suggests that the enhanced reliance on hired agricultural labour largely serves to make up for the reduction in the household labour pool caused by migration, rather than to enhance agricultural production. In a few cases, there is even a substitution effect: two households in the sample have completely withdrawn from local economic activity following migration by their former male heads, thus having becoming solely reliant on migrant remittances for their livelihood.
Still, among the Braima Sori households that have seen their migratory cycles through to completion, especially in Europe, we find more convincing evidence of a link between migration and structural development. This is neither automatic nor universal:
several former migrants who decided to return as a consequence of persistent unemployment explicitly regretted having regarded migration as a permanent substitute for local agricultural production rather than as a strategic way to accumulate resources and invest them in the expansion and modernisation of agricultural production. However, amongst the former international migrants, there are some who did just that, and who now
292 account for the greater average herds, crop outputs, and reliance on animal traction and hired labour among former migrants when compared to the village average. This handful of more dynamic agricultural producers is thus beginning to exhibit some convincing signs of engaging in expanded accumulation reliant on the hiring of wage labour, even though the process is still at an incipient stage. There are few of these, but in so far as they have typically participated in international migration at some time in the past and been able to draw on accumulated resources from those migratory experiences in order to expand the scale of production and introduce changes to its character, they constitute the most convincing evidence of a structural migration-development nexus in our two case-study sites.
Caiomete Braima Sori
Current migration negatively but moderately associated with labour demand
Current migration positively but moderately associated with labour demand Past migration not associated with demand
for agricultural labour, positively and moderately associated with demand for
non-agricultural labour
Past migration positively associated with labour demand
Remittances not associated with the demand for agricultural labour, negatively
associated with the demand for non- agricultural labour
Remittances positively but moderately associated with labour demand
Current migration negatively associated with labour supply
Current migration positively but moderately associated with labour supply (typically simple provision of non-agricultural labour) Past migration positively associated with
labour supply
Past migration positively but moderately associated with labour supply (typically simple provision of non-agricultural labour) Current remittances negatively but
moderately associated with labour supply
Current remittances positively but moderately associated with labour supply Positive but moderate association between
current migration and outputs per adult of both rice and cashew nuts
Inconsistent association between present migration and outputs per adult of the main
crops Negative but moderate association between
past migration and output per adult of rice;
positive association between past migration and output per adult of cashew nuts
Positive and consistent association between past migration and outputs per adult of the
main crops Output per adult of rice positively
associated with remittances; no association between output per adult of cashew nuts
and remittances
Moderate and inconsistent association between output of the various crops and
remittances
Table 9.4 Caiomete and Braima Sori: a comparative summary of key features with respect to the social-productive effects of migration
293 No reliance on animal traction Reliance on animal traction and ownership
of animal-powered tools positively associated with past participation in
migration Negative association between herd size and
past participation in migration (the only exception being former migrants to Europe,
in which case the association is a positive one)
Positive association between herd size and past participation in migration
Table 9.4 (continued): Caiomete and Braima Sori: a comparative summary of key features with respect to the social-productive effects of migration