Men, migration, and households in Botswana: an exploration of connections over time and space

Abstract

Survey results indicate a very high proportion of ‘female‐headed households’ in Botswana. Field research in a village in Botswana, however, reveals that the residential household is an inadequate, and misleading, unit of analysis. Domestic groups are not necessarily co‐resident, and domestic arrangements are characterised by fluidity and adaptability. In particular, limiting investigation to the residential household conceals a great deal of men's connections with and contributions to children. Extending investigation beyond the residential household reveals links between men and children to whom they are related in a variety of ways. Men may be related to household heads, and to children in households, as sons, brothers, sons‐in‐law, maternal uncles, biological and social fathers, cousins, and grandfathers. The patterns of men's connections to children and households change systematically over the course of their lives as they negotiate competing, overlapping, and succeeding claims on their resources and labour. These patterns are described in tables showing men's connections to households, their marital status, and their place of residence by age in 1973 and in 1993. Individual case studies illustrate the complexity of the lived experience underlying these patterns. The costs and benefits of high fertility are distributed more broadly than an image of the isolated female headed household would suggest. Changing economic contexts, particularly the decline in migrant labour to the mines in South Africa, relative decline in the economic importance of small‐scale cattle herding, and the demand for wage labour within Botswana, are altering the structures of opportunity for men, and are being reflected in changing patterns of household formation and connection to children.