Incentives in Labor Migration

To anthropologists and economists, as well as to local employers and governments, the subject of large-scale labor migration has long been one of great interest and concern particularly in the eastern and southern regions of Africa. References and publications can be traced back over many years and the earliest definitive study was probably that by Schapera in Bechuanaland in 1943. It is assumed therefore that the phenomenon of labor migration in Africa and something of the very large numbers of men, and also women and children, involved in it are familiar. Suffice it to say that industrial, agricultural and commercial enterprise has depended very heavily on migrant labor in those parts of the continent, and to a considerable extent it still does. For example, it is probable that as much as two-thirds of the African workers of both the Tanganyika sisal industry (employing about 110,000 men in 1958) and the Northern Rhodesian copper mining industry (employing some 40,000 men at the end of 1957) were migrants.