Department of Development Studies, Political Science and Public Administration, and History

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Browsing Department of Development Studies, Political Science and Public Administration, and History by Subject "labour"

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    Acquiring Human Capital Skills through Labour Migrancy: The Case of Colonial Njombe District, 1900-1960s
    (Hipatia Press, 2016-07-30) Mgaya, Edward
    The migration of labourers to centres of mining, plantations and industrial production has been one of the most important demographic features of the African continent since its incorporation into the capitalist money economy. It is, however, surprisingly that the influence of this phenomenon on rural transformations remains largely unexplored. Most of studies have addressed the negative consequences of labour on the local communities. This is the impression that this paper aims to correct by using colonial Njombe as a case study. While not denying the detrimental impacts of labour migration, the paper integrates written and oral information to establish that such exclusive attribution of rural underdevelopment to labour migration was indeed a traditional way of viewing labour migration. Such views were mainly a result of macro-economic cost-benefit analysis that economists have always considered and emphasized upon. This article, therefore, is an effort to go beyond such economic arena by considering the acquisition of human capital particularly linking labour migration with western education and the spread of the Kiswahili language. Drawing from transformational approaches, this article argues that knowledge and skills that Njombe migrant labourers got from different work places, imbued them with elements which knowingly or unknowingly became part of the instruments for the wider rural transformations
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    The Search for ‘Her story’: Women in the Narratives of African Migratory History
    (American Research Institute for Policy Development, 2015-06) Mgaya, Edward
    Gender has become a category of concern for many historians of labour migration in contemporary scholarships. This article notes some of the factors which made it possible for historians to turn to questions of gender. It is a modest attempt to survey the historiography of labour migration and gender as it developed in the late 20th Century and explore some current directions in this scholarship showing how African historians have gained a more understanding of African migration through the examination of women migration in particular. In short, the article examines the pace through which women have been integrated into the narratives of African migratory history. In this article I argue that although African women were for centuries viewed as non-labour migrants, the historiography of labour migration from the late twentieth century reveals women as both national and international labour migrants. This came as a challenge to the then dominant paradigms which were silent on women issues.