Paper short abstract:

Southern Mozambique has been one of the most important labour suppliers to the neighbouring countries, and domestic agricultural production became dependant on migrant wages. Today unemployment is rampant in the whole region but agricultural production remains as low as ever.

Paper long abstract:

Labour has been a recurrent issue of analysis in southern Africa, mainly due to the appearance of an industrial type of production since mid-nineteenth century onwards, its initial difficulties to secure enough wage labour, and its overall effects on land and agriculture. In Mozambique During the colonial debate was mostly oriented to the role of the State: whether it should favour migration as a source of revenue, or it may try to change the trend to be able to develop at home productive activities. After the independence Frelimo's option was the opposite: they wanted their labour to work at home. However, the Frelimo's attempts to increase agricultural production through collectivization failed. Today, in a context of increasing unemployment in South Africa and Zimbabwe, many Mozambicans still prefer working without a contract in south african farms -or in the informal trade-, rather than producing their own food in their own land. This means that many rural households still depend on money sent -although not regularly- by relatives leaving abroad or in Mozambican cities . Also means that due to lack of money to buy food in the rural areas, some childs are sent to the cities to be raised by relatives having an income. This allocations of dependants who have to be fed and dressed is not easy, and normally this tension is worked out through the kinship structure. Therefore, kinship is the social place where new solutions, and also new dependencies and conflicts, appear.