Of Local Places and Local People: Understanding Migration in Peripheral Capitalist Outposts

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which migration and social change intermesh. It focuses on internal migration from Northern to Southern Ghana and through scrutinising changes to livelihoods in Northern Ghana in the long durée, the paper documents how these changes have contributed to women’s ability to migrate southward. Drawing on qualitative data collected in 2015 by pairing adults and youths from 24 households in Northern Ghana, the paper also provides insights into recent forms of change wrought by migration. This material is supplemented by data collected in interviews with migrants in Accra. The paper demonstrates that the relationship between migration and social change is not unidirectional. Deep seated social changes in Northern Ghana have precipitated the large scale migration of young women seen today. Migration, in turn, leads to two forms of change; surface level changes relating to the development of new ways of being and changes to deep seated cultural norms relating to the rise of new ways of thinking. By highlighting the different dynamics engendering social change in Northern communities the paper contests the notion of rural communities being sites of social inertia. This paper is published under the Migrating out of Poverty programme, which is funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID)