Taxation, Migration and the Creation of a Working Class in Kenya

Tarus, Isaac

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Title:	Taxation, Migration and the Creation of a Working Class in Kenya
Author:	Tarus, Isaac
Year:	2005
Periodical:	Africa Development: A Quarterly Journal of CODESRIA (ISSN 0850-3907)
Volume:	30
Issue:	4
Pages:	121-137
Language:	English
Notes:	biblio. refs.
Geographic terms:	Kenya East Africa
Subjects:	taxation labour migration working class Economics and Trade Labor and Employment Urbanization and Migration Development and Technology colonialism History and Exploration Economics, Commerce Labor Migration, Internal imperialism
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/24483837
Abstract:	Various scholars have questioned the often-stated causal relation between taxation and labour migration. They have rejected the stereotype that Africans entered labour service to pay taxes, obtain more livestock and marry more wives. This paper argues that migration was a historical aspect of social change. Migrant labourers made deliberate economic choices to pay taxes either by exploiting available resources or by migrating. Special analysis is made of the extent to which taxation engendered the creation of a working class cadre. The labour migrant economies of South Africa, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Algeria and Kenya in particular revolved around the transition of the rural population from a pastoral and cultivator economy to a truncated working class according to the Thompsonian paradigm. They were not merely, as Atieno-Odhiambo declares, 'cogs in the wheel of capitalism'. Africans migrated in search of paid work for various reasons, including the fact that force was used to confiscate their livestock. Many others left in search of employment for the independence and self-sufficiency it gave them. The paper argues that a number of young people migrated voluntarily to obtain money which they then used to pay taxes, but also to acquire certain material possessions such as livestock, blankets, clothes and other paraphernalia, and to become entrepreneurs. As a consequence, a working class cadre emerged that has become an important life trajectory in Kenya. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]