This thesis – and the research project of which it constitutes the material outcome – focuses on the political economy of migration and development in contemporary Guinea- Bissau. This is done by drawing on a specific theoretical framework to interrogate a specific
21 case-study, whose conclusions are then used to re-engage with the theoretical debates.
The relevant theory for these purposes will be presented and discussed in the following chapters, but it is worth taking a moment at this early stage to further elaborate on what the key issues are, and to clarify some of the central concepts that we shall be mobilising.
Not that concepts exist independently of theory or vice-versa; but it is both possible and useful to try and pin down, as precisely as possible, the meaning of a number of key concepts by drawing on only a limited amount of theory – and then proceed to discuss the theory in more detail.
This being a thesis in political economy, one should begin by rendering clear what is meant by the latter. This is less obvious than it might seem at first because of the fact that
“political economy” has over time taken at least two different meanings, drawing on two different theoretical traditions. The meaning with which we are not concerned, and in fact explicitly reject, takes political economy to mean the study of phenomena deemed as
‘purely’ political – electoral outcomes, government actions and so forth – by drawing on ontological, methodological and theoretical foundations provided by (neoclassical) economics, at its most basic implying methodological individualism and rational-choice modelling of human behaviour. We could hardly be further from this perspective. First, because social phenomena are not regarded as separable into more or less ‘purely’ political, economic, cultural, etc. phenomena. Instead, politics is understood as the realm (and study) of power structures and relations, a key part of which are decisively determined by the ways and conditions in which human societies reproduce themselves materially (i.e. the economy). The second reason, on which we shall elaborate further in the following chapters, consists of the rejection of both methodological individualism and rational choice theory as adequate ways in which to pursue the study of social phenomena.
Thus, instead of the above, political economy is understood in the context of this thesis as an approach to the study of social phenomena that is based on the theoretical proposition that those phenomena are fundamentally influenced by, while possibly influencing as well, the way in which society is structured into classes and the ways in which this structure evolves. In their turn, social classes, within this theoretical framework, consist of social strata that are placed in different, indeed opposing, positions vis-à-vis each other with regard to the ownership of the means of production and the nature of their claims on the products of society’s labour. These class relations, within a given mode of production or combination of modes of production, are deemed the last-instance determinants of the socioeconomic trajectory, as well as of differential power endowments and political
22 conscience2. This is, therefore, an explicitly Marxist understanding of political economy – one which is directly derived from historical materialism, or the application of the dialectical materialist philosophical outlook to the study of historical social processes (Marx 1977[1859]3).
Despite having clarified some of the concepts as they were gradually introduced in the previous paragraphs, some important ones have been left unaccounted for. Thus, a mode of production is defined, following Hindess and Hirst (1975:9) as “an articulated combination of relations and forces of production structured by the dominance of the relations of production”. This is just a more rigorous, and perhaps slightly more opaque, way of formulating the definition that we have already introduced in the previous section:
modes of production as coherent sets of resources, technologies and social relations.
Modes of production, which are abstract realities, make themselves historically manifest in concrete social-productive arrangements, or concrete social and technical relations between people, in their interaction with each other and with nature. At this concrete level, but at a broader scale, the concept of social formation is in its turn used to refer to concrete geopolitical entities at a given stage of their historical development.
Contemporary Guinea-Bissau is, therefore, a social formation comprising many different social-productive arrangements, each of which crystallises the logics of one of a relatively small number of modes of production.
I shall argue further on in this thesis that chief amongst these modes of production present in contemporary Guinea-Bissau through concrete social-productive arrangements are simple household production, tributary production and capitalism. The key features distinguishing the former two from capitalism is that, in the latter, ownership of the means of production does not lie with the immediate producer but with someone else, who buys the worker’s labour-power as a commodity. By contrast, in simple household (commodity or non-commodity) production, the means of production (including, crucially, the land) are the property of the immediate producers. While this may still involve the mobilisation (and possibly exploitation) of the labour of others through ties of kinship and solidarity (including patriarchal power relations), it does not involve the purchase of their labour-power. In its turn, tributary production – analogous to what is sometimes also called the ancient mode
2 This is not to say that they are the only determinants, nor that there is a simple and unilinear correspondence between individual positions within a given class structure and individual conscience and behaviour.
3 This section draws extensively on Marx (1977[1859] and 1982[1867]). Detailed referencing is provided in the context of the theoretical discussion in Chapter 3.
23 of production – consists of the appropriation of surplus-labour by means of mechanisms articulated on the political and legal apparatuses of the state (in this case the kingship, and often taking on religious significance). While this appropriation may take the form of either labour itself or of its products, once again it does not involve the purchase of either the workers’ labour or labour-power as a commodity.
We have seen that capitalism is unique in that it is characterised by the separation between the workers and the means of production (through social relations of property) alongside the buying and selling of the workers’ labour-power as a commodity – i.e. a use- value (something useful and capable of fulfilling human needs) that, by virtue of its participation in exchange, acquires an exchange-value (a relation of equivalence with other commodities). Both labour and labour-power may be purchased as commodities: in the sense adopted throughout this thesis, the former consists of work (the useful interaction of humans with nature) when its products are appropriated, through exchange or otherwise, by others; whereas labour-power consists of the capacity to work, which may be sold to the owner of the means of production with a view to being combined with the latter in production – as indeed is the typical arrangement under capitalism. The class that, under capitalism, owns the means of production and purchases the workers’ labour-power is the bourgeoisie; the class that stands in dialectical opposition to it, insofar as it has been historically dispossessed of the means of production and must resort to the selling of its labour-power in order to survive, is the proletariat. Thus, the process of proletarianisation – also called primitive accumulation – consists in the constitution of a proletariat through its dispossession of the means of production.
The process of historical development in the context of social formations undergoing a transition to the capitalist mode of production is therefore characterised by a process of substitution of a specific class structure – a bourgeoisie standing in opposition to a proletariat – for any previously-existing structure. Whenever the previously-existing structure was largely composed of a relatively homogeneous class of independent producers characterised by universal ownership of the means of production, none of them resorting to buying or selling the labour-power of others, we speak of a process of class differentiation.
By virtue of the unequal terms under which the two parties come to the exchange of labour-power (one of them being forced to sell its labour-power in order to survive), the capitalist social relation makes it possible for the purchase to involve exploitation, i.e. the
24 expropriation of surplus-labour (labour undertaken by the workers in excess of that which is required for their own physical and social reproduction). This surplus-labour is, in its turn, incorporated into the commodities produced by the workers as value, and it is eventually realised by the capitalist through the subsequent exchange of those commodities. Because of the generalised character of commodity production under capitalism, each capitalist faces the competition of other capitalists and is thereby driven to increase the rate of exploitation so as to be able to compete. Each capitalist is also driven to re-invest the surplus-value extracted from the workers into the buying of more labour-power and the intensification of subsequent production. Surplus-value becomes capital when it is used in this way, in the context of this specific social relation. The twin forces of exploitation and competition that inherently characterise capitalism therefore contain an intrinsic tendency towards the expanded accumulation of capital and the intensification of production through technical and social means (which I shall refer to as modernisation) – hence the inherently and uniquely dynamic character of capitalism.
In agrarian contexts, any largely pre-capitalist social universe made up of relatively independent producers (who own sufficient means of production to ensure their own physical and social reproduction without being forced to sell their labour-power to others, given that a process of class differentiation has not comprehensively occurred) is what is sometimes referred to as the peasantry. The process of differentiation of the peasantry into classes in the context of the capital relation therefore involves the generalisation of commodity production, with labour-power playing a decisive role as a pivotal commodity.
However, commodification, or the process of expansion of the sphere of use-values that enter into a relation of equivalence with each other by virtue of their participation in exchange, has historically predated capitalism. It is only when labour-power itself is invested in the role of a commodity that we may properly speak of a capitalist social- productive arrangement.
Thus, as we shall see, it is perfectly possible, especially in contexts where simple commodity production predominates, for a major share of society’s total labour to go into the production of commodities even while the capitalist social relation is itself absent from, or only incipient in, the process of production. Again in agrarian contexts, a typical way in which this occurs consists of the introduction of market mediation between production and consumption through the substitution of cash crops (agricultural production destined for market exchange) for food crops (destined for consumption by the immediate producers).
This constitutes an instance of commodification – one which continues to make massive
25 inroads throughout the developing world, in most cases predating (and paving the way for) properly capitalist social relations of production. In this thesis, we shall be looking at the development effects of migration in Guinea-Bissau in general, but we shall be focusing particularly on its agrarian context, not least because this social formation as a whole remains largely agrarian to this day. We shall therefore be especially interested in assessing how some key processes of agrarian change are playing out in rural Guinea-Bissau, the main emphasis being on commodification, class differentiation and modernisation (in the specific sense mentioned above).
All of the above provides the minimum conceptual basis required to undertake a discussion of, and investigation into, the political economy of development. Because we are interested in the political economy of migration and development, however, we still need to introduce the basic concepts to be mobilised that pertain to the domain of mobility, migration and their respective consequences. Thus, throughout this thesis, migration shall refer to a permanent4 change in geographical location involving a change in social context.
It is a narrower concept than mobility, which consists of any change (or the capacity for change) in location – permanent or otherwise, and not necessarily involving a change in social context. As is obvious, not all migration is motivated by the wish to undertake an occupation, nor does it subsequently give rise to such an undertaking – when it is and it does, however, we speak of labour migration – which shall constitute our main focus, albeit not the sole one. Then, while away from their contexts of origin, migrants may send flows of resources (information, money, goods, etc.) back to those contexts: the specific case of the flow of money and goods is referred to as remittances (money or in-kind). Following the completion of a migration cycle, the permanent move by the migrants to their original context of origin (be it the village, city, region or the country/social formation as a whole) is referred to as return migration.
Before we begin our investigation into the political economy of migration and development in contemporary Guinea-Bissau, only two more things are in order. The first, which takes up the next section in this introductory chapter, is a presentation of the way in which this thesis is structured. The other consists of explaining what is meant by
“contemporary” in the context of this research project. In reality, it takes two slightly different meanings: throughout most of the passages drawing on secondary sources, it usually refers to Guinea-Bissau’s post-independence period, with a major focus on the last
4 Needless to say, the distinction between ‘temporary’ and ‘permanent’ is always to a certain extent arbitrary and requires operationalisation (see Chapter 5).
26 few years and occasional inroads into the colonial and pre-colonial past; in other passages, however, especially in the village-level case-studies drawing on primary data collection, it mostly takes on a ‘snapshot’ meaning, and refers to the period when the data were collected (late 2010-early 2011) as well as, usually, the preceding months.