PART II CASE-STUDY: GUINEA-BISSAU
6. Migration and development in Guinea-Bissau: a macro-level overview
6.3.1 Migration within and from Guinea-Bissau: a brief historical overview
Migration is a central and permanent feature of Guinea-Bissau’s history. Indeed, the significance and diversity of historical population movements occurring in this territory could hardly constitute a more eloquent disproval of the myth of the immobility of ‘pre- modern’ societies (see Chapter 2, above). The lack of historical records makes it hard to precisely locate in historical time the original settlement of the territory by the various population groups that were eventually to split and recombine themselves to form the mosaic of Animist ethnic groups that are currently to be found in Guinea-Bissau, particularly in its coastal and island areas. However, there is agreement as to the fact that the area was already inhabited for many centuries or millennia by the time of the arrival (and warring expansion) of the two great peoples from the hinterland of the African continent that presently constitute the bulk of Guinea-Bissau’s Muslim population: the Mandinga, or Malinke, whose presence is traced back to the 13th Century; and the Fula, or Fulani, who entered the territory in the 15th Century and eventually subjugated and converted several of the pre-existing groups (including the Mandinga, defeated at the Battle of Kansala in 1868 and subsequently converted: Pélissier 1989). The co-existence and interpenetration of Animist and Muslim cultural elements that characterises Guinea-
163 Bissau’s population in the present is therefore itself a product of large-scale population movements, whereby pre-existing and relatively small Animist polities were effectively
‘compressed’ against the coast, and in some cases militarily and politically subjugated as well as acculturated, by the two aforementioned empires from the hinterland.
The arrival and founding of trading outposts by the Portuguese from the 16th Century onwards was another factor that brought about significant population recomposition and movement, as the autochthonous population often tended to congregate in the vicinity of those outposts in order to engage in trade and benefit from the available economic opportunities. In the particular case of the port and trading area at Geba, the conversion of many of those autochthonous people by the Portuguese effectively brought into existence a distinct sociocultural group – the Cristãos de Geba, or Geba Christians – that has persisted until the present day. It should be noted, in the meantime, that dispersal, relocation and cultural influence worked both ways, as shown by the example of the lanỗados – Portuguese traders who penetrated deep into the territory and became acculturated. Indeed, this process of hybridisation and mutual acculturation is what accounts for the emergence and development of a specifically Creole language and culture over the subsequent centuries (Nafafé 2007).
In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries (the period of the “scramble for Africa”), the attempt by the Portuguese to ensure effective colonial domination of the territory was pursued by waging ‘pacification’ campaigns against those local groups which opposed their domination, while relying on shifting alliances with others (Pélissier 1989). As highlighted by Carreira and Meireles in the mid-20th Century (1959), those wars, too, constituted a cause of population movements, as did the subsequent introduction of colonial taxes, forced labour and mandatory crops by the Portuguese colonial administration. Indeed, the migration by a significant share of the Balanta ethnic group from their ‘original’ homeland in the Oio region to the southern part of the country’s territory from the 1890s onwards was driven by a scarcity of rice in the North that was itself a consequence of colonially- induced changes in the social organisation of farming brought on by mandatory groundnut cultivation (van der Ploeg 1990, Temudo 2009).
In the meantime, and as Carreira and Meireles also mention, permanent large-scale migration was not solely brought on by opportunities and disruptions introduced by foreign peoples and invading armies; rather, ‘internal’ factors such as the demographic pressure upon the land, the deterioration of the soils or the outcomes of political disputes in the
164 context of customary political structures were also typical root causes of migration that stretched well into the past (Carreira and Meireles 1959, Jao 2003). In addition, relatively short-distance temporary migration in the context of the agricultural cycle, whereby certain groups relocate to different areas in order to grow and harvest various crops during parts of the year, has also long been a feature of many coastal and island communities. Moreover, the Manjaco, Pepel and Mancanha have also long had a tradition of moving southward, eastward and to Bissau during the dry season, in order to seek non-agricultural employment and engage in other productive activities during the mostly idle part of the year as far as rice production is concerned (Cardoso 2002). In the East, pastoralist Fula communities remained semi-nomadic up until the 20th century and practiced transhumance extensively – a practice which has remained in existence, albeit to a less significant extent, to the present day (see Chapter 8, below).
Thus, the onset of colonialism proper, with its associated warfare and coercive changes to socioeconomic organisation, brought forth specific forms of internal mobility that merely superposed themselves upon, and modified, a secular tradition of temporary or permanent mobility for a variety of motives that was shared by virtually all the population groups inhabiting the territory. The mid-19th also saw the emergence of the first significant population movement outwards from the territory83: migration into Southern Senegal, mostly by people of the Manjaco and Mancanha ethnic groups, initially to work in groundnut plantations and to tap rubber, and subsequently also to undertake other activities like domestic work (Gable 2000, Jao 2003). These population movements were initially motivated by the demographically-induced pressure on the land and the proximity to Senegal, but later on also reflected the attempt to flee colonial ‘pacification’ and the constraints of colonial rule (Jao 2003), while often also constituting an attempt to pursue personal emancipation84.
Partly as a consequence of their seafaring experience as a coastal people, the Manjaco then went on to further consolidate and diversify this migratory current as they began to seek employment as sailors in French merchant vessels in increasing numbers, eventually leading to the settlement in France by the first intercontinental Manjaco pioneers in the early 20th Century and the subsequent sustained development of a Guinea-
83 Excluding relatively local mobility within the territory of those ethnic groups that straddle the Northern and Southern borders, like the Felupe (or Diolla) in the North or the Nalu and Sosso in the South. These have long taken place in order to visit family members and especially in the context of religious and initiation ceremonies (Interview no.1).
84 Interview no.1.
165 Bissau–Senegal–France migration system (Carreiro 2011; see also Chapter 7, below)85. As a consequence of this and ever since that time, the substantial Manjaco community in France has tended to concentrate in harbour areas or in their vicinity – particularly Marseille, Bordeaux and the Le Havre-Paris corridor (GRDR 2010) –, even though most of these migrants and their descendants subsequently moved away from seafaring and took up very different jobs, including industrial jobs in the car manufacturing sector in significant numbers86.
The late colonial period saw further population uprooting and movement, largely as a consequence of the independence war from 1963 onwards. As the conflict swept the country, there was significant rural-urban migration to Bissau in order to escape the impact of war, initiating a process of accelerated urbanisation that, for different reasons, would then persist beyond independence (see below). Moreover, during the war and throughout the territory, many rural communities were voluntarily or coercively moved from one place to another by both the colonial and independence armies, in an effort to remove those communities from enemy control. Additionally, there was an increase in outward flows, with a view to fleeing both war itself and the intensification of political repression by the colonial administration, most of which took place into Senegal, further reinforcing the Bissau-Guinean contingent there (Cardoso 2002), but also to the Republic of Guinea, where the PAIGC had its headquarters at the time.
The period after Independence in 1973-74 brought on further changes to the patterns of population movement and international migration within and from Guinea- Bissau. The expansion of economic opportunities in Bissau, especially in terms of employment, which arose as a consequence of the replacement of the colonial bureaucracy with an autochthonous one, increased the momentum of the rural-urban migration and urbanisation processes that had been triggered by the war (Figure 6.8). On the other hand, many (though not all) Portuguese colonists returned to the metropolis, and were accompanied in this move by a first wave of “Luso-Guinean” migrants (typically of mixed ethnic background, relatively high social status and various links with the former colonial administration) (Machado 2002). This constituted the first stage in the coming into existence of a post-colonial intercontinental migration system linking Guinea-Bissau and
85 This migration system has also included The Gambia, which is located immediately to the North of the Southern Senegalese region of Casamance and which in this context also became one of the main destinations of Bissau-Guinean international migration.
86 Interview no.1.
166 Portugal, which emerged in parallel to (and with few linkages with) migration to France via Senegal. Indeed, although there was a fair amount of temporal superposition between these two systems or chains in the subsequent decades, in a long-run perspective one might say that the former largely took over from the latter, given that fresh migration flows to France began slowly to decline, as a consequence of the tightening of migration restrictions in this country during the economic downturn of the 1970s, precisely as migration to Portugal started to grow in importance87. Additionally, the country’s independence also enabled some of the Bissau-Guinean population who had fled to Senegal during the war to return to the country, even though this took place only gradually and was partly compensated by fresh countervailing outward flows, given that there were other factors underlying migration besides the conflict and colonial repression. The figure of 87,000 Bissau-Guinean migrants in Senegal put forth by Galli and Jones (1987) probably represents the peak of the Bissau-Guinean migrant stock in that country, which according to the available estimates has by now been substantially reduced (HWWI 2007, SCMR 2007;
see next section, below).
0 100000 200000 300000 400000 500000 600000
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Figure 6.8 Guinea-Bissau: Urban population, total and share of total population, 1960-200988
The year 1980 witnessed the coup d’état that overthrew President Luis Cabral, leading to the separation of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde into two completely autonomous political entities and to the removal from the administration of numerous Cape Verdean cadres, many of whom returned to Cape Verde. Post-independence political
87 Interview no.1.
88 Total (red line, left axis) and share (%) (black line, right axis). Source: WBDI:
http://databank.worldbank.org/ddp/home.do
167 persecution and exile were not inaugurated with the 14 November 1980 coup, however, for many people (particularly former Bissau-Guinean combatants who had fought in the colonial army) had already been previously forced to flee the country in order to escape graver consequences (indeed, many were captured and executed prior to 1980). As we have mentioned before, the neglect of farming and the rural sector were a constant feature of the urban-biased post-independence economic policy strategy, and this caused an exponential increase in rural-urban migration all the way from the developmentalism of the 1970s through structural adjustment in the 1980s and until about 1990, at which time the urbanisation rate finally began to stabilise (Figure 6.8, above). For all its proclaimed intention of ‘getting prices right’ and boosting agricultural production by freeing it from its previous fetters, the period of structural adjustment in the 1980s in fact corresponded to the peak of internal migration to Bissau, for an already deteriorated socioeconomic situation became even worse for many rural people. The only problem, of course, was that the standard of living in Bissau also deteriorated (Proenỗa 2003).
A partial and much-needed escape valve came in the form of migration to Portugal, which from the 1980s onwards took on a new qualitative character: this second main wave of post-colonial migrants were, and have been, more diverse in their ethnic and geographical backgrounds, less educated on average and more labour-oriented (predominantly relatively young males in search of employment) (Machado 2002). This was made easier by relatively permissive migration regulations and controls in Portugal at the time, alongside the boom in labour demand associated with the latter country’s accession to the EU in 1986 and the inflow of European funds that ensued: the construction and public works sectors, in particular, thrived until the 2000s and employed tens of thousands of Bissau-Guinean labour migrants over those two decades.
Another important new type of migration that emerged after independence and has persisted until the present consists of student migration, most often within the ambit of student cooperation agreements with other countries. The former Eastern bloc countries were especially prominent in this respect in the 1970s and 1980s, but the destinations of student migration became more diversified over time: Russia, Germany, Portugal, Brazil and Cuba, among others, have all been important partners in the context of these agreements, in some cases allowing for the consolidation of relatively sizeable communities
168 of highly-skilled Bissau-Guinean migrants via ‘leakage’ from university training to the labour market89.
The 1998-99 civil war constituted the latest major event triggering abrupt population movements. Because the war was mainly fought in and around Bissau, upwards of 200,000 residents of the capital are estimated to have fled to rural areas (Temudo 2009b:256). This lasted for many months and exerted significant pressure on food production and provision systems, which were already under stress due to the direct disruption caused by the fighting. In addition, a few thousand relatively wealthy and educated residents of Bissau, who were able to mobilise the necessary resources in a short period of time, fled the country (especially to Portugal), some of them eventually deciding to remain away after the conflict came to an end.
Finally, the 2000s may be described as the period of diversification of Bissau- Guinean international migration, from a pattern that was largely built on colonial (France, via Senegal) and post-colonial (Portugal) linkages to one that has gradually become more flexible, varied and responsive to differential labour market opportunities. Two main factors concurred to account for this. First, the acquisition of Portuguese citizenship, or at least permanent residence rights, by many Bissau-Guinean migrants who had been in Portugal for some time, which made it easier for them to circulate to other EU countries.
Second, the gradual deceleration (and then recession) of the Portuguese economy from the early 2000s onwards, which disproportionately affected the construction and public works sectors and left many immigrants without a job. Although some responded to this by returning (more or less temporarily) to Guinea-Bissau, others have sought jobs in other labour markets that, at least for a while, exhibited more dynamism. Spain has been a case in point, given the continuing demand for low-skilled labour in its economy, which accounted for the exponential increase in the Bissau-Guinean community in this country over the last decade (especially in the Basque Country and the agricultural region of Almeria)90, but there is also evidence of the United Kingdom and Luxembourg emerging as important new extensions of the diaspora in recent times (Carreiro 2011).
89 Interview no.5.
90 Interview no.2.