The Son of the Hawk Does Not Remain Abroad: The Urban-Rural Connection in

Africa

Josef Gugler

African Studies Review, Vol. 45, No. 1. (Apr., 2002), pp. 21-41.

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The Son of the Hawk Does Not Remain
Abroad: The Urban-Rural Connection in
Africa
Josef Gugler

Abstract: Most rural-urban migrants maintain significant ties with their communi-
ties of origin in Africa south of the Sahara. Contrary to "modernist" assumptions
that these ties would fade away, they often continue to be strong. This urban-rural
connection has important consequences for rural-urban migration, for
urban-rural return migration, for the rural economy, and for the political process.
To understand the processes underpinning the urban-rural connection we need to
distinguish different migration strategies and to deconstruct the notion of "rural."
Depending on their migration strategies, urban residents connect with a range of
actors at the rural end: more or less closely related kin, kinship groups, non-kin
groups, villages, larger political entities. These connections play out differently for
men and women.

Resume: La plupart des personnes emigrant des zones rurales vers les zones
urbaines maintiennent des liens importants avec leur communautC d'origine au sud
du Sahara Africain. Contrairement aux conjectures * modernistes P selon lesquelles
ils se deferaient progressivement, ces liens restent souvent solides. Cette connexion
entre le rural et l'urbain a des consequences importantes en ce qui concerne la
migration des les zones rurales vers les zones urbaines, la migration inverse des les
zones urbaines vers les zones rurales, l'kconomie rurale, et les processus politiques.
Pour comprendre les processus sous-jacents a cette connexion entre l'urbain et le
rural, il est necessaire de faire la difference entre les diverses stratkgies de migration,
et de dkconstruire le terme * rural >>.En fonction de leurs strategies de migration,
les residents des zones urbaines s'associent avec un kventail de protagonistes du

African Studirs h i m , Volume 45, Number 1 (April 2002), pp. 21-41

Josef Gugler is a professor of sociology and director of the Center for Contempo-
rary African Studies at the University of Connecticut. Previously he served as
director of sociological research at the Makerere Institute of Social Research,
Uganda. He is the editor of Thr Urban Transformation of the Developing World
(Oxford, 1996) and Citirs in the Developing World: Issues, Throry, and Policy
(Oxford, 1997). His African Film: &-Imagining a Continent is forthcoming from
James Currey and Indiana University Press.
22 African Studies Review

monde rural: parents plus ou moins proches, groupes parentaux, groupes non-
parentaux, villages, et plus grandes entitis au niveau politique. Ces connexions se
manifestent de maniere diffirente pour les hommes et pour les femmes.

[It is] no longer easy to dichotomise . . . the rural and the urban in
Frafra life today. The world of the migrant and that of his home-
land are not separable entities.. . .
-Keith Hart (1971)

Many urban dwellers in Africa south of the Sahara are firmly rooted in a
rural context.' Already more than a generation ago, researchers observed
the importance of urban-rural networks (Van Velsen 1960; Hart 1971;
Gugler 1971). Subsequently, however, the topic received little attention.
The common assumption appears to have been that this was just a passing
phase on the way to a permanently settled urban population divorced from
its rural origins. Thus when Coquery-Vidrovitch (1991) presented her
report "The Process of Urbanization in Africa," sponsored by the Social Sci-
ences Research Council, to the 1989 annual meeting of the African Studies
Association, she devoted just a few sentences to the rural ties of urban
dwellers and posited that these ties were disappearing. For that conclusion
she relied on the comments of some young men she had talked to. If the
scope of her evidence left something to be desired, the more interesting
point is that she was taking one position in the life cycle as an indication of
social change-a common fallacy, especially in Western societies that exalt
youth. In doing so, she failed to distinguish what may be called "biograph-
ic change" from "historical change" (Gugler & Flanagan 1978:97-117).
As it happened, while Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch compiled her
report, I was in Nigeria replicating a survey I had carried out in 1961. Then,
when I talked with people about their visits to their home villages, their
children would exclaim: "I don't want to go bush!" Now, twenty-six years
later, those children had become the adults we were interviewing. It turned
out that they were as connected with their villages of origin as their parents
had been-if anything, a little more so. This continued strength of the
urban-rural connection required a structural interpretation (Gugler 1996;
1997). More recently James Ferguson published Expectations of Modernity:
Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (1999), a fine
account of the range of rural-urban strategies pursued by miners on the
Zambian Copperbelt since large-scale mining started in the 1920s. The
book is also a critical analysis of the scholarship on labor migration in Zam-
bia-the most important body of urban scholarship anywhere in Africa.
Thus it serves as a response both to the expectations of those children who
 The Son of the Hawk Does Not Remain Abroad 23

were ready to forget about old, dirty villagers and to the "modernist master
narrative" (48), as Ferguson puts it, of social scientists.
Significant urban-rural relationships are common in Africa. In just
about every city, the majority of residents maintain ties with a rural place of
origin, and virtually every African village is affected by actions of emigrants
now resident in urban areas.* This urban-rural connection has major
implications for the lives of urban residents as well as villagers. And it con-
stitutes a key element, arguably the most important one, in political align-
ments. The widespread pattern of strong urban-rural networks raises issues
as to the socioeconomic context, the modalities, and the political implica-
tions.
Many migrants have to leave wives and children behind in the coun-
tryside. For others, parents continue to define a rural place as home. But
for many urban dwellers rural connections reach beyond their immediate
family to embrace a rural collectivity understood as a descent group. The
relationship commonly entails moral as well as instrumental elements.
Such far-reaching and often strong urban-rural networks appear to be par-
ticularly widespread in Africa, even if they have been reported elsewhere in
the ~ o u t h . ~
Ekeh (1990) has argued that kinship systems were elaborated and
strengthened in Africa during the many centuries in which the slave trade
ravaged much of the subcontinent. Kinship systems provided a measure of
protection in stateless societies as well as in predatory state^.^ And it is
indeed striking how my own account of the strength and persistence of the
urban-rural connection among the (by and large) stateless Igbo of south-
eastern Nigeria (Gugler, 1971; 1997) is echoed by the observations of Fisiy
and Goheen (1998) on the highly centralized Nso' of northwestern
Cameroon. What both areas have in common is rural populations firmly
established on ancestral lands. Where they differ is that well-established tra-
ditional rulers may strengthen the position of those at "home" vis-a-vis
those "abroad."
"Home" is ambiguous for most women. Most descent groups in Africa
are patrilineal. In the Igbo saying "The son of the hawk does not remain
abroad," the hawk stands for the migrant's patrilineal forebear. A women
marries into their husband's home, but her position there is more precar-
ious than her husband's (Gugler & Ludwar-Ene 1995), and in any case she
usually retains ties with her home of origin as well (Ludwar-Ene 1993;
Trager 1995). In the urban setting "home people" are usually also defined
in patrilineal terms, and a married woman is connected through her hus-
band with the social network of his home people. This, again, is a more ten-
uous connection for the woman, and many women create communities
afresh in urban church gatherings (Ludwar-Ene 1991), where they put rit-
ual ideology in the place of kinship i d e ~ l o g y . ~
"Home" is ambiguous for some men as well. Among the Yoruba of
southwestern Nigeria, mobility has been high since at least the nineteenth-
24 African Studies Review

century wars, and many people have a measure of choice in committing

themselves to a "home town" (Trager 1998; 2001:49-51). Elsewhere s u b
stantial rural-rural migration has problematized the relationship of the
migrants with the land and their new neighbors. Thus in northeastern
Zambia, where residential choices are very fluid and open to constant
negotiation and renegotiation, most return migrants move to a very broad-
ly defined home area rather than a specific village (Moore & Vaughan
1994:173-74); "home" is where the returnee will be welcomed by kin,
rather than where he or she may be from (Ferguson 1999:130-32; Ash-
baugh 1996: 290).
The literature on the urban-rural connection often mentions, but
rarely explores, the desire of urban residents to be buried "at home." Many
are the stories of family, kin, and/or co-ethnics making great efforts and
going to considerable expense to fulfill this last wish, traveling with the cof-
fin across impossible roads or sending the casket across the Atlantic. We
may take the intended burial place as the definition of a person's "home"
(Geschiere & Gugler 1998),and for most Africans this is a rural "home."

Ethnic Networks and Organizations

Most migrants move to a city where they can expect to be received by rela-
tives or friends. They will be offered shelter and food for a while, they will
be introduced to the urban environment, and efforts will be made to find
them an opportunity to earn a living. Given particularistic recruitment pat-
terns, some find themselves among relatives or friends at work. This pat-
tern of initial urban association encourages people from the same area to
form residential clusters. Allocation of housing by public authorities or
employers may inhibit such clustering. But even when residentially dis-
persed, people of common origin frequently maintain close ties and think
of each other as "home people."
Links with home people in the city and ties to the common home tend
to be mutually reinforcing: Each enhances communication and social con-
trol in the other context. Marriages are arranged through home people
and serve to establish additional ties with affines in the village or close by.
Frequently, the urban-rural connection takes on a normative character.
Whether to remain involved in the rural community is no longer simply a
matter of individual affection and calculus; rather, such involvement is
expected among members of the social network of home people. An ide-
ology of loyalty to home is established, and it tends to hold sway even over
those few who succeed in establishing themselves securely in the urban set-
ting.6 The connection between ties with home people in the city and ties
with people at home is at its most poignant and dramatic when home peo-
ple are called upon to bring one of their own to be buried on the ancestral
land. Then the reception accorded to the corpse depends on the standing
 The Son of the Hawk Does Not Remain Abroad 25

of the deceased in the rural community (Lentz 1994).

Most urban dwellers find that they have a measure of choice about how
closely they wish to associate with various relatives, or whether to discon-
tinue relationships with some of them altogether. Epstein (1981) describes
the pattern in the 1950s on the Copperbelt in what has since become Zam-
bia, where the corporate kin group of the village was transformed into a
social network of urban kin maintained and developed selectively. At the
same time, in the city the range of recognized kin may be extended, and a
minimum level of support may be expected from all people sharing a com-
mon origm.
Recently Lambert (2002) has shown the growing economic, political,
and cultural integration of a Senegalese village in the world at large. He
argues that the local entity of the village has been transformed into a
translocal community. In the process the kinship idiom has been extended
from defining claims on agricultural land to defining rights and responsi-
bilities in disputes over urban resources such as the rights of residence in
urban homes and rights to urban employment opportunities.
Urban communities of "home people" have established formal organi-
zations in many African cities. We may refer to them as "ethnic associa-
tions"-as long as we keep in mind that most are much less broadly based
than such a label suggests. The terms current in Francophone countries-
associations d'orignaires and associations de ressortissants-more accurately
convey the basis of their membership. Here again, women are likely to be
marginalized. The ethnic association may have a women's branch, but that
branch tends to be subordinate, and it is composed of women who have
their husbands' rather than their own origin in common.
Ethnic associations, in addition to providing support for their mem-
bers, are often deeply involved in the affairs of the home community. They
tend to draw in fellow home people, and indeed some use a measure of
compulsion to have all participate in reunions in the city, to visit back
home, and to contribute to rural development projects. An urban collec-
tivity is thus connected, not always easily, with a rural collectivity (Gugler &
Flanagan 1978:81-88). The collective involvement of urban residents and
villagers is strikingly displayed in "homecoming" festivities that have
become an annual event in many places.7
The power of ethnic associations was dramatically demonstrated in many
African colonies in the 1950s when they rallied the rural masses to the
nationalist cause. After independence, authoritarian states have usually been
wary about the potential of these associations for mobilizing opposition, and
many of them have been outlawed altogether. A number of studies have
shown how ethnic associations were affected by, and adapted to, changing
political contexts. (See Woods [I9941 on C6te dlIvoire; Lentz [1995;
1998:563-6251 on Ghana; Barkan et al. [I9911 and Trager [2001:205-341 on
Nigeria; and Eyoh [1998], Geschiere [1997:97-1101, and Nyamnjoh and
Rowlands [I9981 on Cameroon.)
26 African Studies Review

Support for Migrants and Resource Transfers

Urban-rural networks have a major effect on the migration process. Vil-

lagers are well informed about urban opportunities, and indeed about the
events that have restricted urban opportunities across Africa over the last
generation: increased competition as education expanded, economic
crises, and structural adjustment policies that put a heavy burden on the
urban population. Migration based on unrealistic expectations is discour-
aged, and urban unemployment remains circumscribed. At the same time,
considerable resources are mobilized in support of migrants. More or less
distant relatives, in the village as well as in town, sponsor the education and
training of potential migrants, facilitate their move to the city, integrate
them into a network of kin and people from home, and support them in
their search for earning opportunities. The urban-rural connection, while
it cannot guarantee the success of the rural-urban migrant, makes a suc-
cessful outcome more likely and reduces the stress involved in the venture.
The frequent crises to which urban low-income earners are exposed
are cushioned by support from relatives and other people from "home."
When the need arises, they can fall back on the rural community. The
prospect of retiring in one's "home place" mutes pressures for compre-
hensive social security legslation. These urban workers who maintain a
rural base thus do not constitute a proletariat, but rather, to use Waller-
stein's (1967:501) phrase, a "quasi-proletariat." The urban-rural connec-
tion fosters rural-urban migration when opportunities beckon (Flanagan
1977), and it facilitates return migration when urban conditions worsen
(Potts 2000).
Resources are transferred by urban residents to the countryside. They
are expected to bring gifts-goods and/or cash-when they visit; they
sponsor the education and training of relatives; they assist villagers who
come to town to undergo medical treatment or to deal with the govern-
ment; they provide employment to the builders of their house "at home."
Also, "sons abroad" are ready intermediaries for the rural population. They
are considered members of the village, and their counsel is usually trusted.
Some successful women play similar roles (Trager 1995).
Ethnic associations often make major contributions toward improving
rural conditions. They initiate development projects in their home areas,
raise funds among their members, seek to attract government resources,
and increasingly solicit international NGOs. Between 1981 and 1992, the
projects implemented in the small market center of Touba, Mali, and sur-
rounding villages included the construction of additional classrooms for
five schools, a health center with dispensary, maternity ward, and laborato-
ry, an electrification program, a post office, four wells, two water towers,
and two dams. These projects represented a total investment of US$6.9 mil-
lion or about US$300 per inhabitant. Ninety-one percent of that invest-
ment was generated by the migrant community (Pratten 1996). Of course,
 The Son of the Hawk Does Not Remain Abroad 27

the development efforts of ethnic associations are subject to the very same
strictures that apply to the rural programs of states, international organi-
zations, and NGOs. Conflicts within these associations, serious inefficien-
cies, and complaints about corruption are common; class, gender, and age
present divisions of interest as well as differences in values; and if ethnic
distinctions are very much the exception, there is usually a very real
urban/rural divide.
The transfer of resources to the rural community has contradictory
effects on rural out-migration. Increased education and training are com-
monly assumed to enhance access to urban employment opportunities and
thus to foster rural-urban migration. While this effect certainly holds for
the individual village, assessing the aggregate effect is more difficult. To the
extent that urban contributions raise levels of education throughout a
region, the likely effect is an increase in the educational and training
requirements for specific jobs and only a limited expansion in urban
employment. In any case, most transfers will tend to have a dampening
effect on out-migration in as much as they raise rural living standards
either directly through income transfers or indirectly by improving rural
earning opportunities. Gifts for relatives and the provision of public ameni-
ties have a direct effect. More significant in the long run are improved
roads that facilitate the sale of rural products; the generation of employ-
ment (limited in the past to farm labor and house construction but grow-
ing with the increasing numbers of urban entrepreneurs investing in pro-
duction facilities in their home place); and electrification that opens up
new opportunities.

Multiple Distances
The existence of an urban-rural connection implies distances: spatial as
well as economic, political, social, and cultural. The urban actors bridging
these distances find various rewards: access to farm land; a plot and cheap
labor to build a rural residence; cheap labor to set up a sweatshop; goods
to be traded in the city; followers to provide electoral support; refuge from
political persecution and civil war; social integration and recognition; cul-
tural grounding and identity. They also have to deal with conflicts: the
demands made on their limited resources by villagers who are even poorer
than they are; political conflicts in the rural setting; incompatibilities
between their urban and their rural social networks; contradictions
between their urban and their rural designs for living.
There are thus multiple dimensions to the urban-rural connection.
The great variations in the extent and depth of urban-rural ties across the
subcontinent need to be understood in terms of the large number of vari-
ables involved: the extent of the economic gap between urban residents
and their rural contacts; rural land rights as defined by national legislation,
28 African Studies Review

local custom, and power relationships; the character of politics at the

national as well as the local level; the greatly varied understandings of kin-
ship in different rural settings; the distance to be traveled from urban to
niral values, norms, and identities.
Most people appear to move easily between the urban and the rural
and are adept at the situational change required. The exceptions are all
the more instructive. In highly urbanized Zambia, many men have lived
their lives in the expectation of a permanent urban existence and are ter-
rified when confronted by the necessity of returning to an unfamiliar and
probably hostile village. They have not only failed to maintain contact, to
visit, and to make gifts, but they also no longer have, or have never learnt,
the cultural skills that would allow them to be readily accepted. They might
change their dress, but their body stance and their comportment around
elders or relations with women would be likely to offend. Indeed, several
studies have shown that they cannot speak properly: Villagers are insulted
by their urban dialect. As Ferguson (1999:96) phrases it, they do not have
the "performative competence" of others who can switch readily as the sit-
uation demands.
A religous urban/rural divide provides an example of another cultur-
al distance too great to be bridged: the Islamic frontier. Muslim Mafa in the
town of Mokolo, northern Cameroon, pay visits to their rural kin, but they
cannot eat with their relatives, drink the millet beer that is important in
Mafa rituals, or stay overnight in the absence of proper facilities for Mus-
lim ritual. These people will be buried in town (Van Santen 1998).

Deconstructing "Rural" and Distinguishing Migration

Strategies
We need to deconstruct the notion of "rural." This seemingly simple label
obscures the fact that urban residents connect with a range of actors at the
rural end: more or less closely related kin, kinship groups, non-kin groups,
villages, larger political entities. Of course, some such distinctions need to
be drawn at the urban end as well-above all, the distinction between indi-
vidual urban residents and the rural-oriented organizations they may have
established. Such distinctions will help refine the quality of our compar-
isons. To take just one example: The many studies of transfers by urban res-
idents to rural areas tell us very little about the urban-rural connection in
as much as they usually fail to ascertain the beneficiaries: wife and chil-
dren? parents? a communal development project? or perhaps the sender
on whose behalf an investment is to be made-farm labor to be hired, cat-
tle or land to be bought, a house to be built?
The majority of adults in African cities continue to be first-generation
migrants from rural areas because much of the rapid urban growth that has
characterized Africa over the last half-century has been due to rural-urban
 The Son of the Hawk Does Not Remain Abroad 29

migration.* The urban-rural connections of first-generation migrants, and

in particular the rural "contacts" with whom they maintain relations, have
to be seen in terms of their migration strategies. We may distinguish three
such strategies: (1) temporary single migration; (2) temporary family
migration; and (3) permanent migration. People of common origrn tend
to pursue common migration strategies; they follow established strategies
based on shared experience and then collectively develop new strategies as
circumstances change.

The Nuclear Family

A great many urban-rural relationships consist primarily of the connection

between a male migrant and the wife and children he has left in the coun-
tryside where he anticipates retiring eventually. While the husband works
in the city, the wife with some or all of the children works the farm. This
pattern continues to be common, even among long-term urban residents;
in Kenya a generation ago Weisner (1972) named the phenomenon "One
Family-Two Households" (see also Curtis 1995:16; Tostensen 1991). In this
context much rural visiting is simply a matter of (nuclear) family visits, and
transfers for the most part constitute (nuclear) family support and invest-
ments in (nuclear) family assets.
Such an arrangement has advantages for the nuclear family concerned,
but family separation creates problems of its own.g Indeed, it is quite extra-
ordinary how little attention researchers have paid to the stresses inherent
in family separation-or how uncritically some have accepted the conde-
scending notion that African marital relations are "different," privileging a
romantic reading of Western marriage and dismissing the practical require-
ments of family life, whether a family is Western or African.
The (nuclear) "family connection" is subject to the vagaries of the mar-
ital relationship, which often is particularly strained when the husband
migrates to an urban setting on his own. Two threats to the connection
have always been important but have gained in severity in recent years. The
sufferings caused by the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases have
become excruciating with the spread of the AIDS epidemic. And the
neglect or even outright abandonment of rural households threatens the
very survival of growing numbers of such households that have become
heavily dependent on urban-rural transfers.
Neglect and abandonment of rural households by male migrants are
probably most common in South Africa and in neighboring countries that
historically supplied it with labor. Single male migration was encouraged
for generations and eventually imposed by law on a large part of the urban
labor force-policies that culminated in major government efforts to dis-
place dependents to rural areas. These efforts continued even when rural
areas could no longer provide much subsistence to most of these rural
households (Hindson 1987). The stresses inherent in family separation
30 African Studies Review

were thus exacerbated. On the one hand, the proportion of rural house-
holds utterly dependent on urban-rural transfers increased dramatically.
On the other, they no longer controlled a resource base to which the urban
worker might want to maintain a claim.

Parents

The parents of most urban residents live in a rural area, whether they have
never left it or have returned there. As long as they are alive, most of their
children will visit and many will offer a measure of support. There are, how-
ever, important gender differences in such parental connections. Not only
do men as a rule command greater resources than women, but commonly
husbands have a measure of control over the resources and even the very
movements of their wives, a control that is not matched by commensurate
power on the part of wives.1° Furthermore, cultural expectations typically
compel wives to neglect their own parents in favor of their in-laws.
There are significant gender differences in terms of the parents as well.
On the one hand, children may hold more affection for their mother, espe-
cially if their father recognizes offspring from more than one woman. On
the other hand, the father may control resources to be allocated during his
lifetime or through inheritance that are significant for urban residents,
especially those who intend to return eventually.
Another relative or other relatives may have a similar parental connec-
tion to the urban resident in terms of affection and/or interest. A parent's
sibling or an older sibling who took on parental responsibilities may com-
mand filial affection. And, depending on the cultural norms prevailing in
the rural setting and the distribution of wealth, an urban resident may have
expectations of receiving resources either during the lifetime or at the
death of other kin-say, his father's brother, or his own brother. Such rela-
tions with individual rural kin for reasons of affection and/or interest have
to be distinguished analytically from relations with rural groups in which
the urban resident remains involved whether for reasons of affection, or
because they promise access to significant rural resources, or indeed, com-
monly, for a mixture of motives. To such "communal connections" we shall
return shortly.
The parental connection is temporary, terminating with the death of
the last parent (or similarly situated relative). In some cases it is trans-
formed into an urban relationship when the parent comes to stay with a
child in town. Typically this is the case of mothers rather than fathers for a
number of reasons. Wives are more likely to survive their spouse; women
have less attachment in patrilocal communities, especially if divorced, sep-
arated, or widowed; children may have stronger affective ties with their
mothers; many mothers come to town to embark on a second career of
childrearing, this time around for their grandchildren. When the parental
connection comes to an end, the urban resident's rural connection is
 The Son of the Hawk Does Not Remain Abroad 31

reduced accordingly. This transition constitutes a key element in the

changes undergone by the urban-rural connection over the lifetime of the
urban actor. We will return to the life cycle analysis of the urban-rural con-
nection this suggests.

Beyond Immediate Kin

Most urban residents in Africa never break the rural connection altogeth-
er, even after the death of their parents and similarly significant relatives,
including those who had settled with their family in town. In southeastern
Nigeria I found such a pattern of urban families maintaining strong ties
with the (husband's) village of origin continuing from the early 1960s to
the late 1980s. I characterized this arrangement as "Life in a Dual System"
(1971; 1997). Alternatively, we might think in terms of "Walking on Two
Legs" as migrants pursue urban alongside rural interests.
Life in a dual system entails a continuing commitment to a rural col-
lectivity. Migrants settle with their family in the city for the long term, per-
haps for a working life, all the while remaining involved in their commu-
nity of origin: They visit, they (more or less enthusiastically) welcome visi-
tors, they let themselves be persuaded to contribute to development
efforts, they build a house that demonstrates their commitment to "home"
and enhances the village's standing, they plan to retire "at home," and they
want to be buried on ancestral land.ll This dual commitment is rooted in
rural collectivities that continue to control resources, particularly access to
land. The village assures a refuge in a political economy that fails to pro-
vide economic security to most of the urban population and that threatens
all in uncertain political times.12 Even those who consider themselves
immune to any such concerns usually anticipate burial on the ancestral
land. Lentz (1994) emphasizes how in northwestern Ghana people want to
be mourned and buried "at home," a place that for Christians and non-
Christians alike remains closely linked to the ancestors' abode. The idea of
being isolated in the case of death, mourned exclusively by the nuclear
family or, worse, buried anon~mously,is alarming even to university gradu-
ates who are well established in the city. Much of their organizational activ-
ity and the intensity of their home ties results directly from these fears.13
Such connections with a rural collectivity differ from (nuclear) family
and parental connections in an important aspect: They offer permanence.
An individual's connections with family and kin are subject to the vagaries
of interpersonal relationships and are terminated by death. O r they cease
to be urban-rural connections when the individuals concerned move to
the city. Collective connections, on the other hand, are much less affected
by changes in personal networks. Nor are they likely to be terminated by
the collectivity's rejecting the emigrant. Rather it is the individual at the
urban end who constitutes the potentially volatile part of the connection.
The urban resident's life cycle has a major bearing on the urban-rural
32 African Studies Review

connection. In the most general terms, four stages may be sketched.

Recently arrived single migrants with little income such as students,
whether unemployed or marginally employed, may receive support from
close kin in the village but otherwise have neither motivation nor means to
make frequent visits, let alone effect significant transfers. With the death of
parents (and other significant kin), the connection will be diminished.
Married migrants who have left wife (and children) behind are likely to be
closely involved in their rural household. The involvement of urban-resi-
dent families who intend to retire to the countryside is likely to intensifG
over time as their rural investments increase and the time of retirement
approaches (Mayer 1971:ll).
Only a minority of urban residents in Africa are permanently commit-
ted to the city. Prominent among them are single women-never married,
separated, divorced, or widowed-who in patrilineal societies have few
attachments in rural areas beyond their family of origin (Gugler & Ludwar-
Ene 1995).I4 Van Santen (1998) reports that elderly Mafa women find s u p
port in the urban Muslim community rather than in the non-Islamic coun-
tryside. Unfortunately, we have virtually no information about the second
generation of urban residents, those raised in the city.15 Of course, some
people have been settled in cities, especially in the older cities, for many
generations.
Even permanent urban residents do not necessarily abandon the
urban-rural connection, though their relationship with the rural commu-
nity may lose much of its affective content as close rural kin die or move to
the city as well. Some break the spiritual connection when they opt for bur-
ial in the city rather than at the ancestral home. Their relationship with the
rural community may be more instrumental, based on more restricted, less
generalized reciprocity. But for many urban residents the urban-rural con-
nection offers unique opportunities: privileged access to land for commer-
cial farming; a chance to establish a vacation residence at low cost for land
and labor in a community they know; easy access to labor for manufacture;
trustworthy trading partners; political support; status. And given the
neglect most of rural Africa continues to suffer, many urban residents are
in a position to persuade their rural cousins to hold up their part of the
connection.

Patronage and Politics

An element of patronage is commonly found in kinship relations. Even
where rural societies have been rather egalitarian, the city now produces
"big men" whose relationships with kin and villagers are affected by their
economic resources, political clout, and urban status. Their relationships
tend to become more clientelistic in nature, even while kinship provides
the affective element that cements clientelism.
 The Son of the Hawk Does Not Remain Abroad 33

Larger ethnic networks are established as people reach beyond the lim-
ited pool of kin and home people and draw on schoolmates and affines.
These ethnic networks tend to be delineated by the regional recruitment
of schools, by patterns of endogamy, and by common language. Mission
publications have standardized languages and distinguished them from
those of neighbors (Van den Bersselaar 1997). And ethnic groups delin-
eated and recognized by colonial governments came to share interests and
histories that separated them from others. If most urban dwellers identifj
themselves and others in ethnic terms today, their identity often bears lit-
tle relationship to traditional societies and their culture.16 After indepen-
dence, the terminology of the "tribe" was banished from polite conversa-
tion because of the pejorative connotations it had acquired in the colonial
era. The reemergence of this terminology in Africa in recent years reflects
assumptions about close connections between present-day ethnic groups
and a distant past, assumptions that are often unwarranted. The past pro-
vides the raw materials, but ethnic identities are fashioned in the con-
frontations of the urban arena. As Schatzberg (1988:9) put it, ethnicity "is
a protean, contextual, and intermittent phenomenon."
Urban dwellers draw on a whole series of identities of origin: their kin-
ship group, their home village, the village group to which it belongs, their
region, the speakers of their language, their nation, their race. Some iden-
tities represent traditional bonds and shared culture, others are new.
Which identity is salient depends on the situation. Such a series of identi-
ties of origin may be seen as a nested hierarchy (Leeds 1973). A set of con-
centric circles provides a graphic model of the more narrowly or more
largely defined ethnic groupings (Gugler 1975).
Members of an ethnic group frequently monopolize major political
and/or economic opportunities. Two processes are at work. First, an ethnic
group builds up an important lead. Thus in many countries Christian mis-
sions focused their work on particular regions, giving those people a head
start in Western education and hence in careers requiring such education.
When cash crops were introduced, particular regons were favored, such as
country suitable for growing cocoa. And the military officers who took
power in most countries at one time or another frequently came from cer-
tain ethnic groups, the "martial tribes," as colonial administrators were
wont to characterize them, preferentially or even exclusively recniited into
colonial armies.
Second, once some members of an ethnic group are in a privileged
position they come to control access to various opportunities. When their
patronage goes to kinsmen, fellow villagers, or other "brothers," an entire
group can be seen to enjoy privilege, while outsiders are excluded. The
perceived coincidence of ethnic difference and economic opposition may
prompt a reaffirmation of cultural distinctiveness and culminate in an eth-
nic renaissance. Cohen (1969) describes such a process among the Hausa
controlling the trade in cattle and cola nuts in Ibadan, Nigeria.
34 African Studies Review

An ethnic group is usually identified with a territory. Hence ethnic

conflict typically opposes different regions within a country. In extremis,
the urban protagonists in ethnic conflict withdraw to their region of origin
and take steps to establish their own nation. Such was the case of Biafra,
and thus the Congo (Zaire) may yet be dismembered. However, there are
exceptions, most dramatically the conflict between Hutu and Tutsi sharing
common territories in Burundi and Rwanda. Indeed, ethnic conflict usual-
ly is ignited where people of different origin come to share the same terri-
tory. This is the nile in cities throughout Africa, but it also happens in cases
of niral intersettlement-for example, in Kenya today.
Violent ethnic conflict can erupt quite suddenly, as was demonstrated
in South Africa when the apartheid era came to an end. The premier polit-
ical party, the African National Congress, had followed a multiethnic and
indeed multiracial policy from its very establishment in 1912. It always had
a fair succession of leaders from among Zulu as well as Xhosa, and it had
managed to overcome ethnic consciousness to a large extent, at least as far
as the political activists were concerned. The ANC initially encouraged
Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a former member of the ANC Youth League, to
assume the leadership of the KwaZulu "homeland" the South African
regime had established. The Inkatha movement he established was envis-
aged as an internal wing of the ANC under the protective umbrella of the
"homeland." Buthelezi, however, pursued an independent line. While he
consistently maintained an antiapartheid stance, his rejection of the armed
struggle and international sanctions drew Inkatha closer to the South
African regime and away from the ANC exiles abroad. The acknowledg-
ment by the South African regime in 1989 that the majority could no
longer be excluded from the legitimate political process gave urgency to
the conflict over the respective roles of the ANC and Inkatha in
postapartheid South Africa. The conflict escalated in cities where competi-
tion over jobs and housing had heightened and where confrontations
between more- and less-skilled workers, and between longtime - urban resi-
dents, squatters, and migrants in single-men hostels, were readily cast in
ethnic terms, since the majority of Zulu are migrants. At the same time a
Zulu cultural revival took place. Hostel dwellers and unemployed migrants,
in particular, found solace from their material and symbolic deprivation by
taking pride in their king and the reconstructed memory of Zulu resistance
against colonial conquest (Adam & Moodley 1997).
Political patrons recruit much of their following on the basis of com-
mon origin. The nature of their clienteles fosters a perception of the con-
flict over the allocation of resources in terms of the competition of differ-
ent ethnic groups over government jobs, commercial opportunities, and
housing. The largesse thus dispensed mutes class antagonism. Schatzberg
(1988:9-11) argues that social dynamics in Africa south of the Sahara are
best viewed as a triple-stranded helix of state, class, and ethnicity. The state
and ethnicity appear to be the dominant strands. Access to economic
 The Son of the Hawk Does Not Remain Abroad 35

resources is largely predicated on political power, and political alignments

are typically established along ethnic lines. These ethnic divisions continue
to pose a daunting hazard for efforts at democratization.

Conclusion
Urban-rural ties continue to be strong in much of Africa south of the
Sahara, and they commonly reach beyond immediate kin to kinship
groups, non-kin groups, villages, and larger political entities. These con-
nections play out differently for men and women. Present or future mater-
ial rewards, political opportunities, social status, and cultural commitments
motivate niral-urban migrants to maintain such ties and to incur the costs
they entail. This urban-rural connection informs migration strategies, fos-
ters niral development, and shapes the political process.
A growing body of research has allowed us to sketch an analytical
framework for the urban-niral connection. Still, this research remains
extremely limited in relation to the diversity of the subcontinent and the
wrenching changes its people have experienced over the last generation.
May a greater awareness of the importance of the urban-rural connection
inspire future research to give it full recognition, to develop the analytical
framework, and to inform policymaking.

Acknowledgments

The title of this essay translates an Igbo saying "Nwa egbe anaghi ato na uzo
ije." Since I was first startled by the importance of the urban-rural con-
nection in what was then Eastern Nigeria in 1961, I have incurred many
debts. At this time I would like to thank Peter Geschiere, Gudrun Ludwar-
Ene, and Anthony O'Connor in particular. Earlier versions of this paper
were presented at the Thomas M. Watson Jr. Institute for International
Studies, Brown University; the African Studies Center, Boston University;
and the Nordic Ph.D. researcher training course, Aalborg University.

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Notes
1. T h e phrase "Africa south o f the Sahara," while cumbersome, is preferable t o
the racist "black Africa" and the Eurocentric "sub-Saharan Africa." I will use
Afnra as a shorthand for Africa south o f t h e Sahara.
2. T h e media have alerted us t o the significance o f intercontinental urban-rural
networks-of Africans in Paris, London, and New York transforming the vil-
lages they came from-but very little research has b e e n published as yet. Osili
(2000) surveyed Nigerians resident in Chicago. Over 90 percent reported
remitting an average $6,000, about 10 percent o f household income, to h o m e
families i n southeastern Nigeria i n t h e year preceding t h e survey Nearly half
had initiated substantial investments i n housing i n their commurlities o f ori-
gin. Such investments were responsive t o shocks that altered t h e benefits t o
membership i n the community o f origin.
3. For accounts o f urban-rural relationships outside Africa, see Dandekar (1986;
1997) o n India; Trager (1988) o n the Philippines; Carrier and Carrier (1989)
o n Papua New Guinea; Laite (1981) o n Peru; and MoRbrucker (1997) o n Peru
and Mexico.
4. According t o Ekeh, the only exceptions were well-established states: Ethiopia,
which did n o t participate i n the slave trade, and Benin, which never became
involved i n a major way. In these states kinship institutions remained weak.
5. T h e distinction is made by C o h e n (1969:208-9), who suggests that political
ideology tends to take the form o f a predominantly kinship ideology i n seg-
mentary political systems, while it tends to take the form o f a predominantly
ritual ideology i n centralized societies. Here I relate the distinction to the rel-
ative position o f m e n and w o m e n i n patrilineal kin groups.
6. In the 1970s Geschiere (1982:321-24, 327) found among the Maka in south-
eastern Cameroon that the new urban elite's involvement in the village
remained marginal. Their true interests lay in town, and they used their earn-
ings to strengthen their position there. T h e y were, however, acutely aware o f
rural norms and feared the witchcraft o f their close relatives w h e n they visited
the village. Two decades later, Maka elite continue t o fear witchcraft, b u t now
they are also subject t o witchcraft accusations (Geschiere & Nyamnjoh 1998).
7. Trager (2001:15-35) gives a n overview o f Community-Day celebrations among
Yoruba in southwestern Nigeria and provides a detailed account o f o n e such
event.
40 African Studies Review

The amount of rural-urban migration involved in urban growth in Africa

south of the Sahara has been estimated at 43 percent between 1970 and 1980,

39 percent between 1980 and 1993, and 34 percent between 1990 and 1995

(Becker & Monison 1999). These are estimates of net migration. Given sub-

stantial urban-rural return migration, gross rural-urban migration and hence

the proportion of first-generation urban residents is higher. Even in terms of

net migration, these estimates are on the low side in that they assume that

crude birth rates are identical in urban and rural areas; they do not allow for

the fact that urban crude birth rates are presumably lower than rural ones.

Finally, the proportion of rural-urban migrants among adults is higher in as

much as adults are more likely to migrate than children are.

Improvements in transportation permit more frequent visits-for those who

can afford the expense.

Women commonly maintain separate budgets to escape their husband's con-

trol over their income (Fapohunda 1988; Munachonga 1988). The effective-

ness of this strategy depends on both their level of income and their budgetav

responsibilities. The latter tend to be low where Islamic precepts impose full

responsibility for the support of wife and children on the husband and father.

Becker and Grewe (1996) conclude from an analysis of census data for ten

African countries that net urban-rural migration of older cohorts is a distinc-

tive feature in eight of these countries.

For a summary of the extremely limited social security coverage provided by

African countries, see ILO (1993:98). There are some indications that return

migration to rural areas has increased in recent years because of the econom-

ic crisis of the 1980s and the impact of structural adjustment programs man-

dated by the International Monetary Fund (Potts 1997; Ferguson 1999:72,

124).

The ritual dimension of home ties is salient in Piot's (1999:15&71) account of

the Kabre of northern Togo. People who resettled, beginning in the 1920s, as

fanners on land more than a hundred miles away continue to acknowledge the

ritual dominance of their home area, to visit, and to make gifts. Initiates must

return to the mountains to participate in the big dances. Deceased men of

important houses are buried in the communities from which they came. And

the souls of all Kabre, even those who are second- and third-generation settlers,

are returned to their place of origin to be ceremonially buried and become

ancestors.

Becker and Grewe (1996) report that the pattern of net urban-rural migration

of older cohorts is less pronounced for women than for men. Indeed, they

show very high rates of net rural-urban migration of older women in several

African countries. Zambia is one of these countries-even as several studies

from Zambia indicate that abandoned, divorced, and widowed women tend to

return to live with kin in rural areas (Ferguson 1990; Moore & Vaughan

1994:174). Presumably the matrilineal kinship patterns characteristic of parts

of Zambia give women better access to rural resources than is the case else-

where.

Pauw (1973:167), in his study of urban-raised residents in East London, South

Africa, in the late 1950s, noted that they maintained some contact with kinsfolk

in the country through correspondence, visits, and sometimes gifts. These con-

tacts were selective and rarely extended beyond kinsmen of the third degree.

 The Son of the Hawk Does Not Remain Abroad 41

Gibbal (1974:288, 309ff.), i n his study i n Abidjan i n the 1960s, found that
among t h e urban-raised, only o n e o u t o f every t e n identified a village as his
h o m e , n o n e visited such a village more than once a year, and n o n e had built a
house i n t h e village.
T h e category o f second-generation migrants needs t o operationalized i n
terms o f childhood residence rather than place o f birth because many preg-
nant w o m e n used t o return t o the village to deliver amongst kin, while others
came t o t h e city to avail themselves o f maternity services. Bank and Qambata
(1999) report from a low-income neighborhood i n South Africa that the large
numbers o f unmarried mothers usually send their children back t o t h e coun-
tryside t o stay with their mother or close matrikin.
16. O n t h e consolidation o f Igbo and Yoruba identities i n Nigeria, see Gugler
(1996:236-37); o n the invention o f t h e "Bangala tribe" i n the Belgian Congo,
see Young ( 1 9 6 5 : 2 4 2 4 5 ) .