In much of southern Africa, migrancy has for generations been incorporated into the livelihoods systems of millions of rural families. The regional dimensions vary, particularly where there was very inequitable division of land between racial groups during the era of white minority regimes, the dependence of rural households on migrants' remittances if fundamental to their survival. From a structural perspective, the impact of such migration has often been characterized as creating worker-peasants & farmer-housewives. The impact of these patterns on agricultural productivity & the environment is frequently deemed to be very negative, from a variety of theoretical & policy perspectives. Because the patterns are predicated on migrants returning rights to rural land in rural areas, arguments are often made that migrants should lose their land rights, thereby being forced to choose either to be 'committed farmers' or 'permanent urbanites.' This paper argues that such views are frequently based on development narratives about the problems caused for agriculture by migrancy that ignore, or misunderstand crucial aspects of the relationship between migrants & the land. This paper attempts to analyze these narratives, & to offer an alternative perspective on the issue, drawing on empirical research in Zimbabwe & literature on migrants & agriculture in various African countries. To some extent, concerns about migrants & their links to the land derive from particular scholastic traditions associated with social science approaches to the study of the southern African region. The literature on rural-urban migration & rural-urban linkages in the form of land holdings for most of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, for a variety of reasons, is much less likely to view migrants' attachment to their land as problematic. Adapted from the source document.
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Deborah Potts (2000) studied this question.