Paper short abstract:

Empirical evidence on rural transformation in Ghana suggests that changes in land relations, capitalist farming, educational patterns, and individual aspirations lead to changing spatial and social mobility. However, freed rural labor do not (yet) feed into industrialization in Ghana.

Paper long abstract:

In his book "The Great Transformation" Karl Polanyi has shown how industrialization depended on a conscious reworking of labor-relations and rural-urban mobility creating incentives for rural dwellers to seek wage-labor opportunities in the upcoming British industrial sector. This freed rural labor for industrialization, led to urbanization, and was essential for the transition from a largely agrarian to an industrial society. Evidence from empirical research on changing land relations, capitalist farming, changing aspirations, and patterns of social and spatial mobility in Northern Ghana suggests that changes in land relations, educational patterns, and individual aspirations indeed free agricultural labor and enhance spatial mobility and urbanization. But findings also show that educational pathways, individual aspirations, as well as larger economic processes do not (yet) feed into industrialization and the expansion of industrial labor relations in Ghana. Education lacks training in practical skills, individuals rather prefer white-collar to blue-collar employment, industrial labor opportunities are scarce, and rural labor migrants largely enter the precarious and informal labor market in the plantation, service, and construction sector of Southern Ghana.