Seasonal labour migration strategies in the Sahel: coping with poverty or optimising security?

Abstract

An erratum for this article has been published in International Journal of Population Geography 6(2), 2000, 179. Much research on seasonal labour migration in the Sahel has come up with contradictory findings about the relationships between poverty, underdevelopment and such migration. Many of the contradictions stem from the fact that the heterogeneous nature of Sahelian society both in terms of production system and ethnicity has not been fully taken into account when considering migratory behaviour of different populations. This study considers the relationships between seasonal labour migration and poverty for different Fulani populations in northern Burkina Faso, who represent the spectrum of production systems from pure pastoralist through agro-pastoralism to cultivation. There is a general trend of increasing participation in seasonal labour with increasing household wealth; limited financial and human resources mean that many of the poorer households are excluded from this option. However, the picture is complicated by other economic and ethnic differences among the populations. Agriculturalists are more likely to migrate than pastoralists who face year-round herding demands, and one Fulani subgroup, the FulBe DjelgoBe, is unlikely to migrate at all unless desperate. The impacts of circular labour migration also vary. For a few agriculturalists and agro-pastoralists, migration to the cities brings substantial rewards; for most the returns are small but may still be important. The chances of negative outcomes are much higher for pastoralists. Unless adequate provision is made to cover labour deficits in the migrants’ absence, the costs to domestic production may seriously outweigh any benefits in the long term. In times of hardship, widespread temporary out-migration of pastoralists is usually a sign of desperation and destitution. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.