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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The State, Chiefs and the Control of Female Migration in Colonial Swaziland. c. 1930s-1950s
Author:Simelane, Hamilton SiphoISNI
Year:2004
Periodical:The Journal of African History
Volume:45
Issue:1
Period:March
Pages:103-124
Language:English
Geographic terms:Swaziland - Eswatini
Great Britain
Subjects:gender relations
colonialism
women workers
labour migration
History and Exploration
Politics and Government
Women's Issues
Urbanization and Migration
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Economics and Trade
Historical/Biographical
Cultural Roles
Labor and Employment
urbanization
migration
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/4100334
Abstract:With the coming of the colonial period there was an intensification of the process of migration in southern Africa, mainly for work. In the case of Swaziland, the migration of labour was dominated by male migrants as the existing labour markets offered more opportunities for men. This view has become a conventional interpretation of the disparity in the mobility of men and women within States or across borders. This article uses the experience of Swaziland in the period of the 1930s to the 1950s to extend the discourse on why men dominated the migration currents in Swaziland during the colonial period. It points out that it is no longer useful to rely on purely economic explanations of why more men than women were migrating in colonial Swaziland. The argument pushes the frontier of analysis beyond economics and argues that a more significant explanation is to be found in the power relations at the homestead level, whereby men had the power to determine if and when women could migrate. The discussion shows that Swazi men, in collaboration with colonial administrators, employed different strategies to control the mobility of women. The intention of the men was to keep women in the rural areas and they used their power in the homestead and their influence on the colonial administration to create barriers against female migration to local and cross-border industrial centres. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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