85 warn, MiGRANcy .AND HJEAX CHANGE Patricia Leyland Kaufert* In the years of 1968 - 1969, I studied the village of Tsito in the Volt a Region, i ts migrants and the relationship which existed between the migrants and their non-migrant co~villagers* This paper is an extraction of the data collected on the -women of the Tsito community, especially the migrant women: who they were* where they went, what they did, their contacts with home, their attitudes towards migration, but particularly their role as change agents within the rural society of Tsito. A Demographic Profile of the Migrant Women In a survey of all the households in the village, drfca was collected on 5^3 adult members in these households who were absent as migrants; 183 were female. Women migrants, therefore, made up one third of the migrant population in 19^8, whilst two-thirds of the resident village population were women. Among these residents were another 17^ #10 had once been migrants and a further 13$> who wished to join the migrant cycle. In sum, 4-1% of the adult women in the community were, had been, or wished to become migrants, but this is significantly lower than the equivalent calculation for the men which yields a figure of 73^» Tsito has become* or at least is in rapid process of doing so, a community in which the decision to migrate is cjuasi-automatic for the young male and in which almost six out of every ten men over forty either were or had been migrants- * Center of West African Studies, University of 86 The out migration ;of.' women has been more "unusual. Counting the ex-migrants in with the migrants, only a quarter had left Tsito before 1950 and almost two thirds had not migrated until the sixties. (Survey i) Or to express the propensity to migrate of the women in another way? 80^ of the women who were fifty or over had never been migrant; neither had 60% of those in their forties or 53$ of those in their t h i r t i e s; but below thirty, two thirds of the adult women either were, had been or wanted to become migrant. Interviews with school children suggested that t h is proportion was likely to rise even higher as all the girls intended migrating. Age therefore, is one variable which sorts the migration this was true of two thirds of the girls who had gpne to oriented women from those who are not; education is another such variable. Almost all the women who had continued in education beyond the middle school level either were,.had been.or.wished to become migrants? middle school but of only a third of the women whose formal education was either non-existent or arrested after only one or two years at the primary stage (Survey i ). The link between education end migration is a well known one and it was not unexpected to find that it held for the female as it did for the male. Certainly Caldwell, in his cross-national study, found that middle school educated women were as likely to migrate as the middle school educated men; (Caldwell 1969* 61) however, in Tsito, this was not the case. A significantly higher proportion of middle school educated women were ncn-migrant as compared to the middle school educated men; a rela- tionship which seemed to justify one informant's claim that the village had, in the past, successfully kept most of i ts women at home. Another familiar relationship from the literature is the,one- which holds between sex and educational level; (Birmingham, Neustaftt, Omaboe 19&7: 51) a relationship which holds very strongly in Tsito. TfcLthin the female population, one can see how educational levels have risen steadily over the generations but, if each generation is 87 compared to i ts male equivalent, the men have consistently out- stripped the mm en. The sex determined educational gap naturally shows up within the migrant population; with the result that, although the least educated women are the least likely to migrante, they nevertheless represented 37% of the migrant women in 1968 compared to a ]7% representation of men at this educational level. By contrast, 3CP/0 of the men had continued in education "beyond the middle school level but this was only trae of 1^ of the women. The low priority given to the education of a daughter is clearly expressed in terms of access to university? in 1968 Tsito had a rosta of twenty-one university graduates and this l i st has been steadily increasing since then but even now, in 1975» there is not a single uromsn among the graduates* they were teachers, nurses and clerks These educational variations were reflected in the occupational distribution of the migrants? only 20^ of the uromen were in the so called white collar groupj and represented the occupational elite of Tsito womanhood. Another 26% were seamstresses, factory workers or shop assistants with, seamstresses forming the majority. The remaining women were traders or fanners or were classified as housewives by their Tsito families from whom this particular set of data was being collected. these housewives were probably either traders or farmers, or both, as were "their Tsito sisters). (Most of Where did the women migrants go? Almost two fifths remained within the "Volta region and two thirds in this group were living that is in centres either smaller than Tsito or not much larger? in centres either smaller than Tsito or not much larger? that is in centres under 10,000 in population. Another group had not only left the Volta region but had settled in the cities? 4-4% of the women migrants were city dwellers and 8-]% in this group lived in Accra* The greater Accra and Volta regions drew about equal proportions of the "women and only a quarter were to be found elsewhere in Ghana* Finally, the women migrants tended not to be singLej only 3Q& had never been married and there is only a .scattering of widows, the divorced and the separated amongst -the rest* The hi^i proportion of the married is a reflection of one of the major reasons behind the out-migration of.women. Most women migrants •work but, whilst: the men left in search of work, many women leave because they are married to migrant husbands and not because their economic career requires such mobility. A number of villagers, in fact, saw marriage as the only legitimate reason for female migration and strongly opposed the migration of the single girl. In sum, the women migrants are an assorted group even as measured by these simple demographic variables. Thqy span a range of ages, educational levels, occupational categories and they live in areas which range from hamlets to the oonnurbation fomed by Accra and Tema. Some, living within other Volta region villages, lead lives which in their day to day routine parallel the lives of the Tsito resident women; others spend their days in totally dis- similar ways and within an environment which has l i t t le in common with even a large rural village. Migration and Change Having sketched isitthe characteristics of the women migrants the next step is to: relate their migration to rmeal change. One TiTOrJn "which all migrants create rural change is simply by with- drawing from village life. Their absence creates a social gap in the village system and, given the characteristics of migration nnd migrants, it is a gap which is selective in terms of the social categories effected.. The young go; the more educated go; the more ambitious and innovative @D. The actual and the potential quality of rural life is diminished. Lux has expressed it wells "LQ depart des jeunes vers la v i l le appauvrit cet hinterland en le privant de ses forces vives et en degradant 1! ambiance sociale". (Lux 1969* 401). Lux is referring1 to the migration of a ll the young without making any sexual differentiation, yet the migration of young women should not be treated as a simple appendage to that of the young man. Taking the admittedly extreme example of Western Ireland and according to Brody, the refusal of the women to stay at home end marry a farmer was one of the root causes of rural depopulation. (Brody 1973s 98), If •women reject the rural life, men either have to face a bachelor existence at home or migrate in order to marry* Tsito was far from such crisis conditions, yet in the years 1965-68 there was, for the first time, a precisely matched exodus of men and -women and future projections - suggested that this ration would continue. (Survey l)» Given that most girls wanted husbands who would migrate and take them to the toiois, it is apparent that any boy who would prefer rural l i fe is gsing to find that the bride pool from which he \mould select a wife is a progressively narrowing one. However, this possibility had not yet caugfrt much attention in the village? people were rather worried about another problem posed by the migration of vromen and one which had already developed. The women migrant vkio marries and has children and brings up these children away from Tsito has created a concern over the integration of these children into the community when they become adults. Some villagers admired the children of the migrants and others criticised them, but the majority saw them as different from the village raised child. Typical comments weres "They like putting on decent dresses, eating l i ^ it food and to sleep in modem rooms"? "They find it difficult to render domestic service or work on the farm"? "The behaviour of those trained in the to?ais is often an eyesore to people in Tsito. They forget the customs and do not know family members and are rude towards them" (Survey IV"). The remarks are directed at the children "but the reason that this next sreneraticn is growing away from the community l i es in the migration of their parents, particularly in the current pattern of wives and children accompanying their husbands and remaining with them. The subject of the migrant's: children is worth further exami- nation. Both; Lloyd, (Barbara Lloyd 1966J 163-183) and Levine, (Levine, Klein, Owen 1967* 215-253) have looked at the manner in which the educated elite modifies traditional child rearing practises? however, the original theory would suggest that such modifications will not be restricted to the elite* The experiences of rapid change in their o-wi lifes will influence many other parents to adapt their child rearing practises so that their children will fit into the modem-world as they themselves perceive i ts demands, 12-22). And aside from the conscious adaptations made, migrant parents simply? cannot duplicate with their own children the type of socialisatim they themselves experienced; the environments are too dissimilar. a yam farm if you live in Central Accra and a girl raised in Kumasi #10 v i s i ts Tsito only at the Yam festival cannot be expected to know all her kin by si^it and be able to greet them appropriateUy. In simple terms, you cannot teach a daughter to weed (inkeles 1955? The reactions of the villagers, whether favourable or unfavourable, all turned on a perception of these children as more modem than the village raised. This is some evidence of a change in the manner of their socialisation but further evidence came from the replies of the migrants to a question oh where children should be raided, with their parents or in Tsito? (Sirvey V). In fact about a third of the migrants with children had left some or all of them in Tsito in "1968; with kin but it was evident that many children did circulate between Tsito and where:ever their father was working. Keith Hart writes that the Prafra deliberately send their children home so as to ensure their integration with the home land and, (Hart 1971s 31) when the some children were with their mothers and others left 91 question was first phrased, a similar explanation had been expected in Tsito, However, three quarters of the migrant vsomen asked were emphatic that children should stay with their migrant parents? a few argued that they would otherwise be either spoilt or neglected by Tsito kin, but most explanations referred to the desirability of parents controlling the manner in which their children were raised? some went further and said that this was so parents could "Raise their children in the modem wayft« Whether or not parents are conscious of wanting to keep their children with them so they will be fitted for the urban l i f e, the result is Q^ing to be the same. Children raised in am urban environment will know how to handle that environment but will not know the Tsito environment in the same depth* Once children were automatically incorporated into the community and in their growing years, they leamt i ts culture and forged links with their kin and peer groups which would last through their adulthoodj such links were a basis for community integration. The incorporation of migrant's children into the community is more doubtful? their links will be to people in their urban environment and their cul- ture will be the culture of the city. Consequently, the present increasing' rate of out-migration of women in their child bearing years may entail the future loss of their children as fully integrated members in the coinmunity of the next generation. lhat other consequences are there for rural life if the young w>men migrate? Discussions of falls in agricul^ral productivity as a result of migration have normally only been concerned with the loss of young male labour power, (eg. Skinner 1966»145)<> There is argument over whether or not there is serious effect arising from migration but it is premissed on the women staying behind and on whether or not they can produce adequately. However, if the young 92 healthy women leave as well as the men, then the agricultural con- sequences of migration require re-examination. Yet, this was not a; worry in Tsito at the time of the research? only a quarter o|" the migrant women said that their families would miss their help in fanning, (Survey I I I) and villagers never bemoaned the loss o£ migrant labour power on their own faims even when the question (The villagers did say, however, referred to both sexes (Survey IV). that the migration made it difficult to organise communal labour for development schemes as they could not draw on a pool of the young for their work parties). loneliness, however, was a problem recogiised by both migrants two-thirds of the migrant women said that their and villagers? families would be lonely without them (Survey i n) and this was a constant complaint in the village. In the case of the women, this relates again to their children because families are lonely not on3y for the girl herself but also for her children. It is another aspect of that "impoverishment" of rural l i fe which lux described. On the other hand, the migrants, including three-quarters of the women, thought that their families benefited from the inflow of cash from the migrants and almost a ll that that the community benefited from the inflow of new ideas (Survey I I I) from the migrants. It is this l a t t er aspect of migration which will concern the rest of this paper. The Migrant as Communicator In order to understand this aspect of the woman migrant's role as change agent, it is helpful to adopt a network analogy. Before migration became so oommonpiace, Tsito, like most villages, could have been described as having a netwoik which was compact and in which the links between points were physically and socially shortt 93 TBhen an individual migrates he stretches, as if they were elastic, the multiplicity of links that "bind him as a conmunity member. As more and more migrate the social network which represents the Tsito oommunity begins to look like an over-extended spider web laid out on a map of Ghana. S t i ll keeping to the network analogy, the links between people making up the network are also channels for the passage of informa- tion, Following Deutsch, the frequency with jfliich information flows along these channels is a measure of integration (Deutsch 19^4?23). Or, in practical and common sense terms, Tsito can keep i t s e lf together as a community only if migrants and villagers keep>in- constant touch with each other. of the information units circulating through the network will have an internal subject content? who dies, who is bom, who marriesj a ll these items of social gossip which re-create a sense of group membership and group identity in those who send and those who receive these messages. In the interest of integration many Other items of information will have their origin .•and subject they have been 'picked up1 by one content outside the network? network member who then transmits them to other network members* Such a member could be a villager living in Tsito itself but the comnuni-ty members who are most likely to be in contact with new ideas are the migrants. Obviously the migrants are not the only source of information about the outside world, what is happening to i t, or of how the villagers should adapt to the changing conditions it imposes. Tsito, like many other villages, is familiar with the official change agents of a developing societyj development officers, the agricultural agents, the clinic nurses and public health officials, the peace corps volunteers and other itinerant foreigners. The village has radios and daily newspapers, even the occasional film show. All are sources of information and the community 94 their information is often didactic in • character* However the pecu- l i ar virtue of the migrant; as communieator is that, whilst he is recognised as some -one who knows and understands the outside world, he is also recognised as an insider; someone who can translate Ms message into terms that people can understand j of whom they can ask questions; who understands the releTip.ee of what he is saying to the Tillage community "because that is where he grew up himself grid it is a world he knows intimately. This idea of the migrant as a trananiter of cultural information .(Boissevain's 1970)* However both Boisse- from cue sty stem ..to another in both of which he has membership, recalls such labels as Kama's "Intercalary Influential" (Banna 1967: 167) or Boissevaln1 s '•Barker"o. vain and Harm a were, thinking of what might be called the "Big;'men"; the mm. who find jobsi arrange scholarships, get projects through government departments, turn .out the voters, chair migrant association meetings aid lecture the village on the need to move into the: modem •world. Tsito counts such men within i ts migrant population said they are key figures, with the added virtue for the researcher that their impact for change is often open to documentation. However, to concentrate on such men .would be the ignore ..the full role that migration plays in allowing the transmission- of:-newIdeas ' into rural .areas. There axe few tfBig men" but there are many migrants and over half the village households listed one or more migrants :;•.<•:• members. There are? therefore,.- many more communication channels aid ones which lead directly into many more family units then the ones which can be traced back to these few influential ?aad people's reaction to it might mean that, one considered only change messages that were consciously propounded, and consciously heard. Migrants may tranaait information items-unconsciously aS well as consciously. Unconsciously, for example, a well paid technician #10 rides home to Tsito on his own motor "bike and wears anew suit to church on Sunday, is feeding a number of information units to village observers. These range from the latest toiloring styles in Accra to the income levels ai-iwell trained technician can expect. On the other hand* if he t e l ls his parents to send a junior brother to Kumasi rather than Xegon then he is consciously passing on information, gathered outside Tsito, that the technical degree may have more future value than the non-technical» notes). The distinction made here between conscious and unconscious transmission is a key one and especially relevant when looking at the role played by women migrants. (These are real examples culled, from research Tflfomen Migrants as Oommunicators One approach is to adopt the outsider sociologist stance and ask which women within the migrant group one would expect to be in contact with new ideas. In theory, these should be women whose physical or socio-cultural environments are distinct from those of the village women because, if the environments are the same, so probably will be the information which circulates within the environ- ments* In simple terms, if a woman lives in a village about the same size as Tsito with roughly similar amenities and spends her days fanning, trading and in domestic work there is not going to be that much she can t e ll her mother and sisters about a woman's l i fe that they do not know for themselves. On the other hand, the woman who lives in the city can describe a l i fe in which food is bought rather than grown; in which the collection of firewood is not one of .the domestic tasts. A village woman sees her days as a routine in which these jobs are constantly and laboriously a p a r t; once they were accepted as part of the inevitable lot of being a woman but from the city living migrant she leams they are only the inevitable lot of being a rural woman. in which water is not head carried from the riverj 'She will 'also leam about things that are present In the urban centres not just the ones that are absent? "village women will vary in their level of concern with dance halls, or better schools, or big stores, or electric cookers, or city women who'vrork as doctors or lawyers* or the latest pattern in cloth; but whatever their pre-occupation can hear about these things from a city living aunt or sister. A city presents both a different physical and a different cultural environment to I s i t e 's but a woman migrant may move In a different socio-cultural framework without living In a city. A woman with a higher educational level than the average village woman or in a modem style occupation Is open to new ideas, through her educational and occupational experiences, even if she lives in an environment not too dissimilar from Tslto itself. And she equally demonstrates a new model of being a woman to those villagers who watch her and discuss her. A cluster of women have become teachers like the men, or clerks like the men, or factory employees like the men. Women have received regular monthly wages like the men snd have sent something from this wage packet back to Tslto like the men* Women have gone to secondary school and teacher training college like the men. In brief, although sexual differentiation spells social differentiation for most "women, this particular cluster have proved that I ts extension into educational and occupational fields is not an Immutable law. Having selected out the urban, the educated, and the women in the modem occupational sector as those most likely to communicate social change messages? consciously and/unconsciously back into ..Tslto, the next step is to look for the level of contact between these women and the village women. The assumption Is that contact 97 implies the occasion for information transmission. as a whole a number of different contact measures were used as i n t e r e st was: not solely in communication for social change but in communication as a factor in integration; however, here .only one measure, v i s i ts home over a twelve month period, will be used. In the research . .. As common sense would suggest, the frequency with which a woman travelled home was determined largely by how long the journey would take her; a relationship which is clearly demonstrated in table one. This relaiion^ip...li.3X)U^t--fet\o-:iiij^'^cai^fbieu.s the need to think about migrant/villager relationships in terms of the geographical position of the home community in tenns of access to the centres which a t t r a c t. . •its migrarrts."'"i1rom'"t'he perspective of looking rat the migran.%'a.9':- " cto^^_g^n.t,^^tMs-^»nee3m---i3m-st-'select"t5u"t'1''tne""ac^e^""to the home torn of the migrant categories who are the most l i k e ly bearers of change information. i . , ,; .,.:•• : In other words, if many of the modernising influences of the city reach villages through the city settled migrants, thai the ••'••• It is eighty-five miles down a main road distarice between-the city ssnd the village...and.-.the numb-er- o-f-t-i-me^'in a year city migrants make the journey gives in indication of the rate at.which change information is potentially fed into different villages. In Tsito's case, all the cities of Ghana l ie outside the Volta. Regions with Accra lying the closest. running through Tsito with frequent and relatively cheap transport. (The journey cost one cedi in 1969)• In each of the cities Tsito counted a contingent of migrants but with the majority living in itocra. .(Survey i ), Kumasi, Takoradi and Tamale all lay over three hours journey away and the migrants living there were seen but rarely; out of the' seventeen women living theres of whom data was collected, on fifteen, year. Tsito' villagers were therefore, likely to be l i t t le effected, . the majority came home no more than once or twice in the. : : by influence!? generated by these city centres. On the other hand, the Accra wjscacaa. were hone r e l a t i v e ly often find information on city l i fe came, therefore, from the capital. in Accra- and data was collected on forty-four; every month- and another fifth came home between five and eleven times in the year). (There"were sixty-six women a quarter came home ' ' 'Table I .xs.( . : Frequency of annual visiting by' .journey time to Tsito; ^ i S ^ T ? ^' 94 "" ~~ " ' Journey Times 1-2 3-4 5-11 12 plus :, Total ' n1 Less than t?o hours T wo hou r s ( app ID X .) 4 21 • • • •3 36 More than Tyro hours 56 • • 10 - 9, 17 10 78 26 • , .. - 20 ,. 100 " 23 ••• 100. 100 .•42 ,-. 29 Many .among the young saw these Accra women as the only ones who, city life was read ,as the - women with middle school education and 39% °f those with to use American sl^ng? "Knew where i t ' s ' a t "; synonymous with being 'modem1. However, if one looks for the modem woman ,-as. defined,by educational or occupational characteristics, there were-a number of such women much closer to'home. 44 further-education- lived within one hour of T si to. Jthe • sane journey time radius were to be found 38% of those in tea.ching, nursing and clerical work. This distribution is partly a reflection of T si to'-S--position fifteen miles from Ho, the administrative centre of the Volta legion and a tovn, which although small carries a rela- tively high weighting of clerical and educational job slots within i ts In terras of education. (Survey II )• Within 99 It is also a reflection of the type of occupational structure. occup ations into whi ciL j;he v smbAtiPua. gwds-.are • iaavift®* - Thearr-job s are not tied to the?city structure but are available fopLthin the rural and smaller uipan j centres; primary school teacher iyitkir| her own region. teaching, in iact, will keep the women being home &very monith. ! Ifarthezmorei, if a! distance control is j introduced neither age nfrr~e<^at1Xftf"sll^r^ • f ;_ H! ! I \ \ i the " * \ *• • • * 1 •' i \ " jPhe !city pased migrants had an advantage-of" level of vim ting. prestige ovejc the loyally basjed migrants but infoimatiqn about the locally based.fas bo|l±L.iptimaJb©-«ad-detailed,-Thfe~-l-evei* contact for^Dmen int thej three categpries df urban, educated land. occupational'! types i£ sbj>wn irji table! p ! ^ j ChangeMAgenta: the c&ianuility. perspective ! •? •; ; . } • • •• . • The problem with taking only the outsider and theoretical I— L ~- ";t i- • ! j ' perspective 4s .that ^t can define1 thf 'women""who Are potential change agents "but cannot;see the barriers which njay blojck or lat leaist impede the pifocess of information tratismisslon. Migraxits, asi the Red Men (Maydr 19^1) jdemopistrates, may live! in an; envircnmenti alivej with new info;rmation,i-^in4*"yet'ia^""Ta"r fas' possible 'close pff tifiir ' ' ' • -. j ; j I : • • - I own lives to i ts effects jand not trarismit many chiange mbssages Equally, a tradition -satisfied village community can turn to the community equivalent bf-a! deaf ear to; what i ts returning migrants attempt to tep.1 it about,Jfche-oiitside W>rld and i ts good gDssip with women friends; in t he j community, offered adequate proof that this was not the case in Tsito. jThe lives of the city Participant observatiion, Ito be translated here as paving a i:" "•••' * i •; ^ * • :, • ' * * v - '• | • i I i f ; i ; i l ' Table jnnual rate of visiting by a£Ce5 educational level and. Urban/rural residencej l $nntial rate of visiting Ag'3 Group under 29 yrs 30-39 40 plus Educational level None & Primary Middle School Further ^Education 1-2 3-4 5-11 12 pit!8 Total y 31 22 7 40 100 55 28.. 33 14 25 100 21 17 11 28 44 36 24 12 27 24 ; 20 9 47 19 25. 25 31 19 26 13 42 28 11 61 1 00 • 100 100 : 100 100 100 18 33 45 -16 31 18 Three -woman who had not visited Tsito in the previous twelve "months were excluded; they lived abroad and were unable to make the journey. Urb?ji/rural residence Under 10000 10000- 39999 Accra 21 36 18 24 100 33 101 women were discussed -aid compared with the life,of .a Tsito woman:* The lives of the educated and income earning nurse or clerk or teacher were a constant source of gossip, from the way they dressed to the way in which they brought up their children. Not all comments were favourable and certainly not .all women, even in the under thirty group, wanted _to_ ^migrate* However,, the., sab ject of ..what might be •'•'•called the 'new-woman1-was always a~"l'ively^ne' sihd one "which always used knowi examples dra?» from among the Tsito women who were seen as representa- tive of the style. The educated and the urban women iiuade up a refere- nce group and yet were intimately known within Tsitb; made them far more .sigiifioJ9Ht ...than, .the .women seen --in —the-newspapers or heard about on the radio or even seen in Ho. this intimacy ; . , r ... Participant observation is a method which provides the most vivid and insightful data to a researcher but is aljsp; thermost • • • open to bias and, therefore, in this discussion of fhe woman migrant, the data will come from survey sources but the, interpretation.'will. draiv on discussions held with community informants-; Surveys were ;. . - cen-due%ed- wi-th-brrth"-the "• nrigrSfit s 'aha" the vail agers'"'"pi"" v,fti eh" at t i t u- dinal questions relating to migration were asked ;of; both. All the •questions asked •in--th-e"-vii±ags""sarvey used"an" bpai fo'rmat bu¥ many in the migrant survey were closed. The design of questions in the l a t er survey was usually based on answers that had been given by villagers and were partly to test the level of community consensus on the migrant role. It was found, for examples that' migrants and villagers:-agreed in seeing the migrant as distinct from the viUa-gero- Many: villagers made the distinction in terms of the education of; the-migrant, the .nature of his ,work,.his income,, that, he travelled and saw many new things and people, that he was. free.p,.f, the control,s:built into village lives. In the mi grant...survey 3 f, the.respondents were asked (Survey IV). 102 to say how important they saw each of these variables were changing the individual* in a sample are shovn in' table three» (Survey V). The replies made by the woman. in Three I II Level of importance in changing character of education, occupation, travel), and leaving Tsito (percentages )'n' §1 Education Important Job Travel Leaving Tsito Income level Very Important Of Some Importance Of No Importance 81 16 3 75 22 3 62 29 9 38 48 14 31 61 8 Total 100 .100 : : : 100 100 : . -V 100 The perception of travel as a key r e - s o c i a l i s i ng experience came it y/as instanced as the out in other answers to other questions; reason for differences within the migrant group between those who remained within the Volt a Region and those who travelled beyond i ts boundaries. The Volt a Region is not t o t a l ly homogenious in t e r ns of e i t h er i ts ethnic population or i ts socio~cultural conditions but a Volta Region 'settled migrant would live in a largely Ewe society and even in the towns h is environment would not be so different from T s i t o. It was these points that informants referenced when discussing why these local migrants were distinguished from the others. The isportsnee 103 attached to a migrant living under different conditions and meeting people of other-ethnic groups suggest that the communiiy is in agreement .with sociologists (eg. Epstein 1969s 77 - 116) on the re- socialisirig impact of living in a multi-ethnic and modernising society., However, the ••ranking given1 by the migrants themselves, including the women, also explains something of the attitude of the migrant to this experience; easier to transform and obviously these migrant Tsomen are relatively open to change- influences themselves and .anticipate change in others. ; the individual who anticipates transformation is much Tttiat more specifically are the differences between migrants and In the village survey only $& denied there was any (Survey IV). Slightly over a third saw the difference villagers? difference* and "disapproved the migrant; reckless, disobedient? arrogant and lacking in respect* Slightly over a third :admired the migrant character; and "civilised, enlightened, well-infomed, sophisticated. The re- mainder either praised some migrants and criticised others or saw the migrant as an amalgam • of positive or negative characteristics' they characterised than as selfish, they selected such adjectives Naturally? when the migrants were presented with six of the (Survey V). comments made on them by the villager respondents, they tended to agree with the positive ones .and to reject the negatives More particularly, they rejected the themes which accused them of being" selfish, of being individualistic or arrogant but they agreed that the migrant was more sophisticated, more ambitious and,better informed than the villager. variation by sex except that the women were rather more biased in favour of the migrant character than the men)- This perception of the migrant role? .as it is accepted by the majority of the migrants and a substantial group of villagers, adds another insight into the manner in which.:the communicator role is played out. Most migrants see (These replies showed l i t t le significant 104 themselves and other migrants as knowing many things that the villagers do not; equally a number of villagers accept this as true of the migrant. Others among the villagers? who dislike the migrant type may accept that he has knowledge but reject i ts value. However* a majority involved in these communication processes defined the migrant as 'one who knows1. This attitude could be observed within many situations in which a migrant interacted with a villager? when an Accra woman said this was the way to p l a it hair, to feed a baby or to choose a husband she said it to her village listeners with absolute conviction that she was right. Whether or not they accepted what she .*.-;.. said and adopted the new way depended ultimately on their attitudes to her or to change itself. The point here? however, is that such a woman was providing info mat ion on alternate ways of doing things. The community not only recognised the migrant as someone who was better informed than the villager!,••"but1 as some one #10 would-pass on this infonnaMon;io the village.1 Mien villagers were asked for -•••• the reasons behind migration, the majority of answers were the familiar ones of seeking work or money or the absence of work, aid:, money in Tsito. (Survey JY)« Yet when, they were asked what .bmefits migration brought to Tsitos the inflow of ideas from the migrants was mentioned more often then- the inflow of casho Migrants saw their money input as beneficial to Tsito more often than this was admitted by the villagers but even here, more of the migrants saw the idea feedback as beneficial? than saw the money feed back in the same light; 86% compared to 77% (Survey III)* The communicator role was not therefore the figment of a socio- logical imagination. The community, both migrant and non-migrant, recognised it as a legitimate aspect of the migrant/villager rela- tionship. Neither was this an exclusively male role as emerged in answers to cjuestions on why vsomaa migrated. (Survey IV). Villagers 105 did not totally approve of female migration but among the 65^0 who did so there were a number of replies which referenced the benefits to a young wom^ji of travel, of becoming 'civilised' just as they had listed them for the migrant in general* (See Qaldwell, 1969° 1O6)« A number of these replies went further .and quoted the benefits that •would come to Tsito when such women fed back this information. Admittedly one village girl saw this feedback as data on the latest fashions but others na.de a link to performance as a modem wife or mother and apparently expected the ideas to relate to an improved methods of child-rearing and other domestic skills« "What are the changes associated with the migrants? What are the new ideas they feed to Tsito? The major change is their own migration and much of the information they transmit is about migra- tion and much of the information they transmit is about migration; where to gp°, what jobs to seek; the importance of education in the migrant. A statistical reflection of their role in this field is that the propensity to migrate is higher if there are already other migrants in the household unit. This particular correlation emerges from the Tsito data, just a Caldwell found it in the national data. Another supporting argument is in the number of migrants who said they had left to join some member in their family who was already migrant or had, once they were migrant, encouraged others to join them* Talking to informants or watching people together provided i ts own examples; elder sisters would take a younger one to towij encourage younger friends to join than; an aunt would look after a niece whilst she trained as a seamstress or a sister would pay towards a younger s i s t e r 's college fees- friends would Another aspect of this influence is that the migrants demon- strate to the villagers the benefits, or the absence of benefit, of allowing others to copy their migrant example. A woman migrant who 106 gets a good job, marries and leads a respectable l i fe is as much an . argument for allowing one's daughter to migrate as a girl becoming an Accra prostitute acts as a counter argument. Many informants, especially women, .argued that attitudes towards female migration changed because villagers had learnt that prostitution was not the inevitable outcome of allowing girls to live in the city and that the money a woman sent home from her salary was just as useful as the money they received from their sons* The change in attitudes came out in answers to the question on (Survey I1/)* Only a fifth of the villagers totally female migration. opposed their migration; either because they thought prostitution was the inevitable, outcome or because they argued that the place of Tsomai. was back- in the village, having children and raising them. The quarter who gave, conditional approval freqaaitly made the condition that the woman should be married and only leave because her migrant husband •'•• needed hex. These reactions, both the negative and the conditional? \.; reflect, a traditional concept of the female role. There is the idea . that a woman must have male, supervision either from her father or her ' husband and that her prime, role in society is as the mother of the next generation. Be contrast, those .who said wDmen should migrate to ?rork or to study or to become 'civilised' were both putting a werasn's goals on ga equivalent basis to a man's and recognising other potentialities in a-woman than the narrowly domestic and maternal. The women migrants were equally convinced that women left to work or to study| (Survey v) only 3 mentioned prostitution although another five said girls were attracted by the ciiy or hoped to find husbands In general, however, they ascribed a serious motive to female there* migrants and a motive linked to economic and career ambitions. Only 8% would restrict migration to the men, although another 10/$ opposed the migration of either sex. (Objections to migration by those who ;..-.. 107 were migrant may seem contradictory but it was not unusual to hear plaints that the exodus of the young was weakening village life although those complaining had no intent of returning, or were unable to do so. This was? however, a reaction against all migration rather than against the specific migration of the women)* iSnother sign that the migrant ivomen transmit information related to migration tack to the village emerged from checking the career ambitions of the next potential generation of educated women migrants. The pupils in the final year of their middle school education were interviewed and asked about their future plans. Out of the twenty- eight girls interviewed and asked,. eight wanted to nurse, eight .to teach and twelve to become typists. Each of these occupations would require further training? each will require that girl leaves Tsito; each will turn the girl into a, wage earner; each entails a different pattern of work than farming or trading; and in each case the girls claimed that they knew about these jobs because some one from Tsito, often their owi kinswoman held them already. Consciously or uncon- sciously that small occupational elite had passed through a message to these younger girls and influenced the way they envisaged their owi futureo Villager comments, however, made it clear that they did not think of the migrant idea input solely in terns of information potentially useful to aspirant migrants s t i ll in Tsito. They thought also of information which could be adapted for use within the village itself yet when respondents were asked about the differences between migrants and villagers they often instanced what might seem superficially? relatively minor points and returned to precisely the same points when they talked about changes introduced by migrants into Tsito. the different clothes the migrants wore; the different foods they (Survey IV). They talked, for example9 about 108 the different use they made of language; the different liked to eat; ways they built ant) kept their houses? the neatness of their children? their preference for beer rather than palm wine and so forth. Each one i s, of course, just such rji external form of change as an observant villager can note down and discuss. They are not, howevers impressive to an outsider in the same way as hearing* that migrants have lead the village in the building of a school, a hospitals a comiranity centre; the bricks and mortar evidence of change. On the other hand, they are symbolic forms which match the social cues that are used in any society marked by social differentia- tion as short hand indicators of a person's social status and, by extension, as probable indicators of many of his values and attitudes'. In a, modernising society like Ghana? adoption of the outward symbols ; : of being modem, whether it is wearing a wig or a mini skirt or purchasing a three piece suit, are read as outward signs of an :inward commitment to change. This seemed to be the perspective-that lay; • ; behind such remarks as "They like European ways": "They do things do things in the Western manner"s and all the other comments that picked out some specific change such as dress or food or house building. ' ,-,- • the women's replies are shown A l i s t i ng of the forms of change mentioned by the villagers was presented to the migrants and they were asked whether'or not they agreed that migrants had introduced changes in eight of the social fields listed by the villagers; in table four* The low percentage who perceived migrant influence on politics might be read as a reflection of a lack of concern among women for the happenings within the political arena but, in fact,, the distribution of replies was not significantly correlated with sex. It was rather a reflection of a general disdain among migrants for village politics; they criticised the villagers for their pre-occupaticn with old conflicts but dissassociated themselves from the groups and issues involved. Table IV Proportion of women mi/ygnts 'fine^agreed -that migrants had introduced'flew ideas in each of the eiiffiit areas l i s t e d. N=65 Education Food & Entertainment • House Building Behaviour to Dress Parents " ' 91 85 83 80 75 Making Money Child Hearing Politics 54 32 • '"' In each of these fields, with the possible exception of eating and dressing, examples were quoted by informants of migrants standing up in public forum and advocating change. There v/ere general-exhorta- tions very much on the lir.es of a speech planned by-the secretary of the Accra migrant Association at Easter 1969. *•• His points covered the duty to respect the chief and his elders; to control'their children; . self-help and village unity in the- interests'of development? more cultural and educational activities1 to improve the cjuality of village living. Other migrant leaders laid more specific proposals to the villagers during the two year period of this research^ piped water, a village hospital, voter registration. technical education, farm co-operatives, electrification,, the obligation on parents : " However, in each example? the migrant spokesman, was a man; there was only one instance in the minutes of the Accra, association which recorded a woman being sent to lay the views of the association (This related to a task which the, cleaning of the town before the women in the community. was traditionally-defined to'the -vromen; before the Yam festival)" The Association minutes showed that i ts tromen members were beginning to take an active role in discussing Tsitc affairs when in Accra but, home -in Tsito," they reassumed the more passive public role of the woman? they left speech making to the men. One has to turn from the public to" the private zone to see women's influence at work. ¥omen filtered new ideas into the community but they passed them through their kin groups, their peer groups, they rarely became" formal spokesman for their friendship groups; 'change.. .. . - - • """ ' ' _ ........ .... - Indeed the formal spokesmen for change even among the men, were few and yet both migrants and villagers agreed that bringingjie..w.. ideas into the village ?^as-an aspect of the general role of being a migrant not one attached only to a select few. The paucity of formal influence on Tsito affairs was balanced however by a high level of informal influence. Participant observation was the source of this understanding and such examples as the career choices of the middle school leavers simply acted as confirmation... Certainly those girls had not planned their careers after listening to a formal speech on women and work, but from informal conversations and observations of women actually in those particular jobs. The fact that the influence was informally exercised does not make it any less revolutionary in terms of the g i r l 's concept of their own futures.... Yet," whilst emphasising that women exercise their communicator role primarily within the private zone, the surveys showed that women were are concerned with and articulate about community develop- ment as were the men. Partly for research reasons, but largely in response to community requests, the migrants surveys contained a number of questions on past and future development projects. (Survey I II and If). The 'No response1 rate among the women was never higher than 4% and their answers were often detailed whenever the question format had been left open; both, are some indication that the questions were interesting to those asked.. (Survey I I I ). The selection \\l e l e c t r i f i c a t i o n; of projects made by the women matched those selected by the men; each sex selecting from the l i st currently discussed in the village and within the migrant community, A l i st which was made up of the following schemes; a community• centre; a small factory; a day nursery; a farm school; (Piped water was being laid in Tsito at the time the migrants answered these questions, "out had e a r l i er been a favourite project for discussion within the Accra Association). E l e c t r i c i ty received the most frequent mention but t h is may have been a reflection of i ts t o p i c a l i t y. The Accra Association had costed an e l e c t r i f i c a t i on scheme and had sent a delegation to lay it before the v i l l a g e rs shortly before the survey was carried through., been rejected as too expensive).. (Much to the association's annoyance it had a farm cooperative. (Survey I I I ). In t h is question the As the debate over the scheme was expected to distort response p a t t e r n s, another question was inserted from which the e l e c t r i f i c a- tion scheme was excluded. migrants were asked which project they would personally support financially xf they had a surplus of money to contribute.. The •;.• . project preferences of the women respondents is shown in table five. The proportion who would extend the c l i n ic is not only evidence of the type of project which most attracted the women but also the on going involvement of the women in a project ?/hich is pecuniarily t h e ir owi. . r e f l e c ts Percentage of wom&n who iniwould contribute money to one of the Table V Extending Clinic Farm school or co-operative 40 17 Community Centre 11 Improving Scho ols Day Nursery. 11 Setting up a factory Building a church The Clinic Project Whenever informants discussed community developments it was usually as an affair of men until someone mentioned the clinic- Built on the outskirts of the village, it provided simple medical care and had a small maternity wing; the more complicated cases were diagnosed and salt on to Ho "but the clinic services were well used in the village and relevant to overall health status. It had the cost was largely met by a local authority been built in 1956? grant but with some money from the villagers and by their community labour. . Set within the history of community development projects in from the building of the first class room in -]886 Tsito ? the clinic represents one of the few which were not concerned with education; until the community college and the establishment of the present Awudome Secondary School, Tsito comnunity effort had gone largely into preparing i ts young educationally for their lives 3,s migrants. In the immediate post-war years, however, it was possible to trace an emergent interest in improving the quality of village living for those who remained behind. There wass for example, a record of tv» teachers aid a returning university graduate setting themselves up as the Tsito Development Association and drawing up elaborate plans for the trading and agricultural development of the village. the same period, the plan for a village clinic was under discussion and caught the support of the women of the community. In about The leading figures in the story of the clinic were no longer alive and it was impossible -to collect a very detailed history but informants provided the basic outline. The planning and organisation, were attributed to the Queen mother of Tsito , her linguist and a woman teacher. (Her husband, who was also a teachers was a councillor on the Tonga local authority council which provided the grant). These 113 the major was that the women three drew on the support and financial contributions of both the village women and the migrant women of that day. On record recorded that the raigrant woman collected £126 among themselves as a contri- bution. The money collected among the uranai was a. minor reason behind the attribution of the clinic "bo them; had succeeded in turning out the communal labour force of the village* One has to understand the condition of the community at the time in order to understand the significance of this point. For, if some factors in the p re-independence period had encouraged gin enthusiasm for community development, others had encouraged an enthusiasm for politics and political conflict. By the mid-fifties, enthusiasm for the fonner had waned, in part because the nature of these conflicts baulked any scheme requiring community co-operation. somewhat tzppropitious situation that the womai-brought their demgnd for community work on' the clinic. It was into this . .. In explaining the success of the womenV-som'e informants relied on descriptions, of. personalities within the' female leadership. Others explained it in terms of the local- authority grant the women obtained; these informants .bLamed the failure of other schemes on the failure of government agencies to provide the-necessajy cash. Both explanations probably had some truth, as well as being the ones which would have been socially the most visible and acceptable to the actors involved. However9 another explanation not only offered more insight into the actual situation at the time, but carried wider implications for the role of women. This explanation was based on a discussion of the structural position of women and how this position had placed them outside the conflicts dividing the men. ; • Within the traditional, political system, the men were either elders or holders of one of the traditional offices within each of the eight clans or they were members in the asafo company of each clan. 114 The council of chiefs was made up of these office holders and sitting, quite literally, facing them the aaafo tinder their leader, the asafo- hene. These were, however, the organisations of the menj the women were represented on the council by a Queen mother who spoke in the interests of the women and who passed dowi any instruction from the council to the T«omen# Descriptions of actual decision making only referenced male actors and yet the above structure suggests that the iromen had a potential to orgaiise thanselves and express themselves politically if they felt the necessity of doing so. The asafo were the military companies ibut, within the political system, the seating position of the asafo facing the chiefs was a symbolic representation partly of the opposition between•'.the -yann-g adult males and the elders and partly of that between the commoner and the office holder. Ihen Christianity and education came to the village, they introduced other bases for the formation of oppositiaial groups; one was the division betweai the Presbyterian and the Methodist and the other between the educated and the uneducated. These groups were in intermittent conflict throughout the first half of the century but the pre-independence period brought in another complication ;by introducing national party politics into the village* It was not possible to predict from membership in one group to membership in another! there were educated Methodists* The clinic was also just the type of project which the womai could claim was their legitimate concern, because it touched en. the health of children and pregnant women and yet at the same time would benefit every one in the village. The benefits would come to the ^ : individual regardless of politics, education or religious status; an important point in a conflict divided community in which projects ?/ere inspected with suspicion least they' should benefit one group more than another. Knally,: any unified movement among the women of the village risked provoking the unified resistance of their structural oppoaites, the man of the village. However, whilst the clinic demonstrated the ability of the won en to organise themselves in a goal directed manner, it was not in itself a project which threatened male control in either the economic or political fields. Aside from the characteristics of the project, the capacity of (Communal labour was always the women to come together owed much to the nature of the leadership figures chosen,, The Queen mother could both appeal to traditional loyalties and to her legitimate right to demand support from a ll Tsito women. Equally? as Queen mother she had her position on the council of chiefs; a key position in this context as it was only through the council that the communal labour force of the village could be organised and ordered to vjorko provided on a clan basis with each clan head instructing the men of the clan to turn out on such and such a day and penalising those who failed to show)o The migrants interviewed, including the women. migrants, (Survey i n) all saw this village communal labour power as a key factor in future projects yet, when they discussed the village leadership that would be necessary, it was evident that were thinking of the change oriented, educated villager However such men had f,ailed in the past to have those characteristics, social or politicals which would have enabled them to activate all the villagers in the way the Queen mother, through her traditional legitimacy as the leader.of all women and a council member had once been able to do* Cb. the other hand, there was the teacher, a. woman who could? through her husband, tap .another of the three essential ingrediants to development, government assistance? The third ingrediant, as the migrants saw i t, was themselvesj their money and their advise. The contribution that the migrant ?/omen made to the clinic was in i t s e lf an example of ihis third factor in operation. They presented it as a group which demonstrates both that they were seen as distinct from the 116 village women and that they were capable of organising themselves ,;; internally at a sufficient level to collect the monies. One man. even told me that he had been pressured by Ms wife to spend this weekends oiit of Accra and working on the clinic; an insight into the ability of the women to succeed as a pressure group by operating a n-umber of individual pressure points; each woman member separately using her influence on the males within her immediate environment. Returning to the teacher, she was by education and occupation an indeed as the early example of the type of new woman whom this paper has been discussing. She equally qualifies as a change agent; only woman who introduced a real bricks~and-mortax .and documented change. Informants described the clinic as her original proposal for which she gained the support of the Qieen mother and survey 17 brought in further evidence that it was seen by many villagers as her particular project. The villagers were asked what really j.nv;•<•:•• rtrr..v suggestions had been made by migraa ts .and among those listed was the teacher and her clinic. Yet so far as I could learn, she had not been a migrant at the time the clinic was; built. She had eertaAr,"1-' 'ben cns-; but the classification was not based on earlier physical mobility, but rather on a perception of her as a travelled and civilised woman who brou^it ' back new ideas to the village. think of her as a migrant even 'when she was a. resident of the village. In oihez* words* people continued to The concept of migrancy as a social transformation which persists even when village residency was re-assumed explained the frequency with which people discussed future change by reference to a future in which there would be increasing proportion of r e t i r e! migrants within the general population aid within positions of influence, (Survey 17 and V).. Some felt that their effect would be destructive of village l i fe because as migrants, they had lost touch with village people and village customs but others anticipated a revitalisation of the villave as the ex-migrants introduced changes themselves and pressured government agencies and their fellow villagers to support their 117 development schemes.. A full discussion of the role of the ex- migrant is not relevant here but this anticipation of their potential role may explain one reason why the women migrants never suggested that the community women might come together again and promote some other scheme. There were, in fact, two proposals under discussion, the day nursery and the extension to the clinic? which appeared suitable projects for a repeat performance of the women's role in the original- clinic yet no woman ever suggested ito Neither was this because the current generation of T»men had lost interest in future development. Heading their answers on the planning and organisation of development in the future they listed migrant groups, such as the association in Accra? or groups in which migrants and villagers were members such as the teachers association, or the formation of a Town Development committee made up of migrant and village representatives. (Survey V). They also discussed the future role of the returning ex-migrant and an alliance between the ex-migrants and the s t i ll migrant to work for development. None of these groupings were sex-ascriptive in character and in addition ?/omen were already active in both the teacher's association and the Accra association. the women concerned with development identified themselves with the migrants and villagers among the men who were equally concerned, and who would allow women to participate in discussions .and planning. This anticipation of playing a role alongside the men may explain why these women never talked about reviving the women's alliance which had built the clinic. It seemed, therefore, that Conclusion The ethnographers have tended to treat women as '^Passive sexual objects, as devoted mothers and dutiful wives", (Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974*1)» when looking at traditional society, and there has been an equal tendency to look at women in contemporary West Africa as 118 relatively passive and. theoretically uninte res ting participants in the processes of change. Migration studies, .for example, portray women as a residual population left in the rural: areas or they look • only at the mother-wife role within the urban area when the woman " ":; has followed her husband to town. The Kosaldo and Lajiiphere volume is an attempt to correct the view of women as passive participants, in traditional society and, in a sense, L i t t l e 's book on African women in to-»ais is a compilation of what has been written on the woman's ovsn response to urban l i f e. emphasis en her assumption of a more active sexual role gives the book a somewhat narrow view of the new woman; Jagua liana's may exist but they are not the sum t o t al of urban womanhood nor are they the model for the aspirations of most young women. (Little 1973)• Unfortunately i ts The migration of women hass of course, been a consequence on the migration of men, either in the direct sense that the women have followed t h e ir husband1 s to to.wi or in the more indirect ssise that a climate of migration has been created in the rural areas which has extended over time to include an acceptance that women might also migrate. of the total migrant population! within their group than did the men and they were under-represented within the modem occupational structure which now accounted for most of the male migrants. However their migration and i ts consequences is not simply a pale reflection . of the migration of the male. In this study of Tsito, the women migrants were only a third they counted fewer educated migrants Reference was made in the paper to the more extreme con- sequences for raral de-population if women refuse to stay hegaei''- .'••"••:.-'..!-.':":- for although the men have drawn women out of the villages as wives, the peunanent exodus of the men will result from a demand by women to live only in the towns.' Tsito was not at this point, as even among the youngest1'women, there was a sufficient pool who did not wish to leave and most migrant women at legist expressed a willingness to retire back to village l i f e. Nevertheless it is a potential pro- blem which may occur in imny African villages in the next two or three decades- Tsito people were rather worried by the migration of women in their child-bearing years and the consequences for the integration of the next community generation in which a proportion would be the children of migrants brought up outside the village. These children would lack, it was felt, those essential cultural and social linkages which were part of every child's socialisation when it occurred within the society of the village. (Lloyd 1974? 127)° Another consec[uaace of the migration of women is that it opens up the world of the village woman to information about the world in which the migrant woman lives and works- Village women had had other foms of access to information about this world through outside ..sources penetrating the village or through the accounts of male migrants. However, their migrant sisters were more effective as communicators because they had the dual common identity with those to whom they pass on their information of being woman and members in the same community.. Some info mi at ion was consciously transmitted as the migrants advised., exhorted, demanded change but their communicator role was also, and perhaps more frequently, unconsciously exercised. By oral description of their lives or simply by demonstration in the ways in which they behaved, their possessions, their reactions to village l i f e, their whole symbolic presentation , of themselves, many of these migrant women, particularly'the urban and the educated, transmitted the information that there are alternate modes of being a woman than the ones knomi in Tsito. The transmission of this information was facilitated by the expectation, held by both migrants and villagers, that the migrant in transformed by mi gran cy. They are recognised as more 'civilised1 120 their kin, their peer groups, their friends; small scale, 411 migrants tend to transmit information as having had access to new infomation and new than the villager; ideas; as having built into their migrant role a legitimate com- municator function. largely within the context of face-to-face interaction with other villagers; private zone interactions- This ig particularly true of the women who did not speak in the public forums available to the men; clan meetings and church or village sponsored gatherings. However whilst the private zone is more difficult to document, information transmission within this field 'is probably more accountable for changes in rural attitudes and acceptance of change than the speeches and projects proposed in the public forum. , The apparent passivity of the isDmen on the public forum level does not mean that they are unconcerned with development and change at the community level. The women migrants interviewed had clear views on the projects that they wished to see in the village and were prepared to express criticism of the village conflicts and the governmental neglect which they saw as having blocked past development. They were also prepared to propose ways in which the future mobilisa- tian of the community should be brought about and new projects under- taken. . Their volubility ran contrary to the usual impression of women as uninvolved in community development. Even in Audrey Snook's detailed study of ethnic associations, there is no reference to Tsomen within the index, few refereices to them in the text and the general tone is that the politics of community development are as much a preserve of the men as the ethnographers once described the politics of traditional society. (Smock I97i)« as the traditional woman was an active, if covert, political role It may be, of course, that just 121 player, the contemporary woman dues play a role in development but a role non-apparent to the outside researcher. Observation in Tsito suggested, for example, that as the village women have learnt more about outside oonditicns they are beginning to pressure for an improvement in their own living and economic opportunities within the village. Tsito provided, however, one ranarkable example of women adopting a development project and seeing to it that it came to fruition. The clinic was clearly in the interests of the women and their children and it may be that women's gaieral failure to support community development schemes is because many schemes do not strike women as relevant to their own goals but rather to those of the men. Another factor in the clinic is that, if the women had not taken over the project, it may not have built at all. The conflicts within the male sector blocked any leader emerging who could have sponsored the scheme whereas the women, being outside the conflicts, oould produce a leadership which could appecjL for conxnunity support without provoking the hostility of either conflict grouping. If the men had been united said prepared to build the clinic the women need not have acted publicly but quietly pressured for the clinic in the background. This may explain another reason why womai have such l i t t le visibility on the development scene; lead and organise then womai have neither the opportunity nor the need to act. so long as men are prepared and able to The clinic project might be read as a demonstration that women this is probably true are a latent force for community development; but whether or not this force might be tapped by governments agencies is rather more cjaestionable. The trend in Tsito was for the young and development oriented woman to be thinking in terns of working with the men rather than acting as a separate feminist group. In addition there is an undoubted risk in any agency sponsoring a too 124 Survey V A sample of -J55 niigrants, of whom 65 were womaa, were inter- viewed on their attitudes towards migration, migrants and the migrant role for ctuinge. The subject area was, therefore the same as in survey 17 but in this survey the question of format was usually closed whilst in. the village survey the questions had been left open. It also included some additional questions which had been suggested by the answers given by the villagers or from discussions with the migrants themselves. 2/ A few migrants and villagers did suggest that children should be sent to spend time in Tsito, however, I found that the general reaction to the migrants' children who were staying in the village was unfavourable. undisciplined and lacking in respect to the elders. (Survey I I I ). The Fra-fra may not face the same problems as their children live within a more encapsulated environment when in Accra but in Tsito the circulation of children between the urban and rural environments was seen as an inadequate solution to a complex problem. (They wexe said to be spoilt, 3) We may represent the set of observed social relationships existing within a specified collectivity of individuals as lines (standing for the relationships) connecting point (standing for individuals. (Mitchell 1973?23)). 4) Skinner notes that Mossi women believed that the lives of their migrant s i s t e r 's were much easier than their own and had these beliefs reinforced by info mat ion fed into the society by these migrants when they visited home. (Skinner 6) 5) In. a sample of ninety-seven, womai migrants, half never sent any money to their families but a third made some financial contribution each month. 6) Not only were different indicators of contact used but both migrants and villagers were asked the same set of contact questions. When their answers were compared a range of discrepancies showed that not only did the migrants perceive their own performance more favourably than did their families but that the perceptual differences were greater whenever the question touched on some particularly sensitive issue within migrant/villager relationships. L 7) Mitchell has an interesting discussion on the relationship between distance from home and the migrant's level of invol- vement with Ms rural community. (Mitchell 1973° 287-314)." 8) O'Baxr describes the Pare wage earners in the following .terms ^They create important: links to the outside world, serve as diffusers' "6T in form atioh about far away places rand new ideas". (O'Barr 1973s73)« 9) In Gal dwell' s • study, the villagers and the urban migrants selected a similar set of reasons either in favour of females migration or against i t. (Cal dwell 1969 s 1O6). 10) Cohen discusses the symbolic forms or life styles that groups wiljL'"adopt to'distinguish themselves from others and the con- sequent use'made of such external signs as facial markings? hair styless dress and so forth, writing: much earlier, discusses the vray in which "Norms are ' often*'.symbolically expressed" and makes specific reference to "Fashion's" of: dress, manners of eating, material possessions and housing, certain types of verbal expression". (Southall 1961;20). (Cohen 1974^74)° Southall, * 126 Bibliography i) Birmingham, Walter Neustadt, I. Ctaaboe, S.N. 1967 2) Boissevain, J. 3) Brody, Hugh 4) Caiawell, J.C. 5) Cohen, Cohen, ABNER 6) Deutch, Karl 7) Epstein, A°L. 1973 1973 1969 1974 1964 1969 8) Harm a, William? J. 1967 9) Hart, Keith 10) Inkles, Alex 1971 1955 A Study of Contemporary Ghana; Volume I I, London3 Allen and Unwin • Friends of Friends; Networks,. Oxford Universi-by Press. .fe.^j^JL4jjiiS.Q.°. 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Clyde 1973 17) Mitchell, J. Clyde 1973b 18) O'Earr, William 1973 "Father-Chi Id Rel at ion ship s and Changing; Life Styles in rbad=», Nigeria" in The City Africja, (edTjHcrac j _ jq Miner,* New York, Pall Mall. g_ j Social Revolution Cairibridge University Press, Education and Family Life in the Development of Class Identification among the Yoruba'% • in-'^h Peter C. Lloyd9 Oxford University Press. London, Rout ledge and Keg&i P,aul= Oxford University Press„ London Norms and Institutions" in Jeremy Boissevain. and J. Clyde Mitchell (ed, ), N_e Studies in Human Interaction, The Ha^ue, Mouton & Co. "Distance, Transportation and Urban Involvement in Zambia" in Aidan Southall, London, Oxford University Press. 'The Pare of Tanzania" in Mark A« Tessler, William O'B&rr and David H. Spain (eds»)s _Traditioni and Identity in Changing Africa. London, Harper and Row. 128 1974 1965 19) KosaldOj M.Z. and Larapherej Louise (eds») 20) Skinners EoP. 2i) Smock, Audrey C. 1971 22) Southall, Aidan (ed.) 1961 California? Stanford University Press. Labor Migration Among the Mossi of the Upper Volta" in Urb_anisa~ ti_on and iMii^rationi _ini West Afri.cs fed.,/? Hilda Kuper Berkeley, University of California Press. b0 Ethjic ^:" Cam- bridge, Harvard University Press London, International African- Institute;, by Oxford University Press.