Men, migration, and households in Botswana: an exploration of connections over time and space
Townsend, N.W.
Journal of Southern African Studies 23(3): 405-420
1997
ISSN/ISBN: 0305-7070 DOI: 10.2307/2637508Document Number: 270236
Field research in a village in Botswana reveals that the residential household is an inadequate, and misleading, unit of analysis. Domestic groups are not necessarily co-resident, and domestic arrangements are characterized by fluidity and adaptability. In particular, limiting investigation to the residential household conceals a great deal of men's connections with and contributions to children. The patterns of men's connections to children and households change systematically over the course of their lives as they negotiate competing, overlapping, and succeeding claims on their resources and labour. These patterns are described in tables showing men's connections to households, their marital status, and their place of residence by age in 1973 and in 1993. Three individual case studies illustrate the complexity of the lived experience underlying these patterns. The costs and benefits of high fertility are distributed more broadly than an image of the isolated female headed household would suggest. Changing economic contexts, particularly the decline in migrant labour to the mines in South Africa, relative decline in the economic importance of small-scale cattle herding, and the demand for wage labour within Botswana, are altering the structures of opportunity for men, and are being reflected in changing patterns of household formation and connection to children.