Labour migration and peasant differentiation: Zambian experiences

Abstract

Abstract Peasants in Zambia, as elsewhere in Southern Africa, were drawn into the world economy as labour migrants, and even now, when urban employment is more permanent, the rural areas are given over more to the reproduction of labour than to the production of commodities. The resulting general impoverishment has not, however, precluded significant differentiation among the various regional peasantries. Moreover, in these peasantries, where many men are absent, resulting changes in property rights related to kinship and in the division of labour between sexes mean that the position of women within the pattern of class formation must be specially examined. Differentiation and the special position of women have to be taken into account in assessing the political potential in societies whose complexity gives special meaning to the 'worker‐peasant alliance'. Notes University of Leeds