Gender, households and reintegration: everyday lives of returned migrant women in rural northern Ghana

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, migration of single women from the rural north to the urban south in Ghana has been making up a growing share of migrant streams. While the livelihood strategies of these migrant women in their southern destinations have been recently examined, the experience of reintegration for those who return to their place of origin has rarely been studied. Drawing on qualitative research with migrant women, returned migrant women (RMW) and their family members, this study examines everyday reintegration experiences of RMW within their households in a rural Dagomba community in Northern Region, Ghana. We conceptualise the household as an arena of everyday life wherein RMW exercise agency to learn to generate livelihoods that support their own as well as household members’ joint well-being. We combine this conceptualisation of household with feminist scholars’ recognition of gender as situated process. Our conceptualisation makes it possible to illuminate gender dynamics around the everyday repetitive decision-making acts that constitute livelihood generation as performed by RMW within specific intra-household dynamics in the context of reintegration in the situated community. Through the examination of the diverse and contradictory ways in which RMW exercise agency in making decisions about livelihood strategies within their households in the studied community, we show how the everyday repetitive acts of RMW contribute to micro-transformations of a situated gender ideology.

Resumen

Desde fines de la década de los 90, la migración de mujeres solteras desde las zonas rurales del norte hacia las urbanas del sur en Ghana ha conformado una creciente porción de las corrientes migratorias. Mientras que las estrategias de supervivencia de estas mujeres migrantes en sus destinos en el sur se han estudiado recientemente, raramente se ha estudiado la experiencia de la reintegración para aquellas que regresan a su lugar de origen. Basándose en investigación cualitativa con mujeres migrantes, mujeres migrantes que retornaron y los miembros de su familia, este estudio analiza las experiencias cotidianas de reintegración de estas mujeres dentro de sus hogares en una comunidad rural de Dagomba, en la región norte de Ghana. Conceptualizamos al hogar como una esfera de la vida cotidiana dentro de la cual las mujeres migrantes que retornaron ejercen agencia para aprender a generar un medio de sustento para lograr su bienestar así como el bienestar común de los miembros de su hogar. Combinamos esta conceptualización del hogar con el reconocimiento de académicas feministas del género como un proceso situado. Nuestra conceptualización hace posible echar luz sobre la dinámica de género alrededor de los actos de toma de decisiones repetidos a diario que constituyen la generación de un modo de sustento como es performado por las mujeres migrantes que retornaron, dentro de dinámicas específicas intra hogares en el contexto de la reintegración en la comunidad situada. A través del análisis de las formas diversas y contradictorias en que las mujeres migrantes retornadas ejercen la agencia al tomar decisiones sobre las estrategias de supervivencia dentro de sus hogares en la comunidad estudiada, mostramos cómo los actos repetitivos de cada día de estas mujeres contribuyen a las micro transformaciones de una ideología de género situada.

摘要

1990年代末期以降，单身女性从加纳北部农村地区迁徙到南部城市地区，已构成了迁徙流动中不断成长的一部分。晚近这些迁徙女性在其南部目的地的生计策略已受到检视，但却少有研究探讨她们回到原生地的再聚合经验。本研究对迁徙女性、回乡的迁徙女性及其家庭成员进行质化研究，检视加纳北部区域达贡巴的一处农村社群中，回乡迁徙女性在家户中的每日再聚合经验。我们将家户概念化为回乡迁徙女性操作行动力，学习生产支持自身和家户成员共同福祉的策略之每日生活场域。我们结合上述对家户的概念化，以及女权主义学者对于性别作为情境化过程的体认。我们的概念化，能够阐述构成每日生活中不断重复的决策行动之性别动态，该决策行动构成了在情境化的社群内部的再聚合脉络下，回乡迁徙女性在特定家户内部动态中所施行的生计生产。透过检视研究社群中的回乡迁徙女性在家户内决定生计策略所施展的能动性的多样且矛盾的方式，我们展现回乡迁徙女性于每日生活中施作的重复行为，如何对于情境化的性别意识形态的微观转变做出贡献。

Keywords:

• Returned migrant women
• reintegration
• gender
• households
• livelihood strategy
• Ghana

Palabras clave:

• Mujeres migrantes retornadas
• reintegración
• género
• hogares
• estrategia de sustento
• Ghana

关键词:

• 回乡迁徙女性
• 再聚合
• 性别
• 家户
• 生计策略
• 加纳

View correction statement:

Corrigendum

Introduction

Since the late 1990s, migration of single women from the rural north to the urban south has been making up a growing share of migrant streams within Ghana (Abdul-Korah 2011; Oberhauser 2010; Oberhauser and Hanson 2008; Oberhauser and Yeboah 2011; Pickbourn 2011; Ungruhe 2011). The emergence of this trend can be traced back to the early 1980s, when the implementation of Structural Adjustment Programmes entailed the removal of subsidies on agricultural inputs which disproportionately harmed the mainly agricultural north. This and ecological changes in the region (Pickbourn 2011) made farming less profitable, hence less attractive (Brydon 2010; Carr 2008; Oberhauser 2010). Household livelihoods became vulnerable and women’s lives became difficult when their share in livelihood responsibilities increased (Brydon 2010; Oberhauser 2010). These processes, coupled with polygyny and patrilineal inheritance systems, pushed women, mainly young school-aged women, to search for livelihoods in southern cities like Accra (Abdul-Korah 2011; Awumbila and Ardayfio-Shandorf 2008; Kwankye 2012; Ungruhe 2011).

The livelihood strategies of migrant women from northern Ghana in their southern places of destination have been recently examined (Awumbila and Ardayfio-Shandorf 2008; Oberhauser 2010; Oberhauser and Hanson 2008; Oberhauser and Yeboah 2011; Tufuor et al. 2015; Yeboah 2008). While a good number of young unmarried migrant women were reported to return to their place of origin (Kwankye 2012; Tagoe and Kwankye 2009), their reintegration experiences have rarely been studied. Ungruhe (2010) examined returned migrants’ motivation for out- and return migration but focused on young men. Another study by Ungruhe (2011) discussed one livelihood activity of some young unmarried migrant women in their place of origin, but these are seasonal circular migrants. Abdul-Korah (2011) and Kwankye (2012) looked at the types of work engaged by returned migrant women (RMW) and men but did no analysis on how RMW negotiate their everyday decision-making about their livelihood strategies in that context. A few studies have looked at the experiences of RMW explicitly, but those concern women who are back from overseas and are highly skilled and elite professionals (Ammassari 2004; Wong 2014) as well as low-skilled workers (Setrana and Tonah 2014). Outside Ghana, African studies have paid attention to the experiences of young migrant women when they return to their place of origin. In Burkina Faso, these women’s social and economic status within their households was reportedly not higher upon return (Ouedraogo 1995), while in Senegal, their autonomy from elderly men and degree of financial independence, enabled by their accumulation of dowries, were found to have increased upon their return (Lambert 2007). However, how these experiences compare those of returned internal migrant women in the context of northern Ghana has not yet been explored.

Furthermore, among those studies that examined RMW’s livelihood generation, the dynamic relationships between their gendered decision-making on livelihood generation and intra-household dynamics in the reintegration context have rarely been explored. In Ghana, Pickbourn (2011) paid attention to social norms and household compositions of migrant women in their place of origin but focused on the impacts of their remittances. Wong (2014) studied returned overseas migrant women’s livelihood strategies in relation to their caregiving tasks, but these women are highly skilled professionals with class privileges. Outside the Ghanaian context, in the Philippines, Gibson, Law, and McKay (2001) specifically examined RMW’s livelihood strategies in their place of origin but focused on their collective livelihood strategies beyond the individual households.

This study examines the reintegration experiences in everyday life of RMW who moved back from Accra to their place of origin and at the time of the fieldwork had settled in their households in a rural Dagomba community in the Northern Region, Ghana.¹ To study RMW’s reintegration experiences, we conceptualise household as the arena of everyday life where RMW exercise agency to learn to generate livelihoods in order to support their own as well as the other household members’ well-being (cf. Niehof 2004). We combine this conceptualisation of household with gender as process in space and place. Drawing on Butler’s (1990, 1997) notion of gender as repetitive everyday performance, thus as process, feminist geographers argued that gender is produced in space and place and in part constitutes that space and place (see Massey 1994; McDowell 1993), which implies that gender and household as domestic space in place are (re)produced in interaction. Combining these conceptualisations allows us to illuminate the dynamics of gender around everyday decision-making on livelihood generation performed by RMW, as part of the specific intra-household dynamics and in a context of reintegration in their community. By examining the multiple and contradictory ways in which RMW exercise agency by making decisions about livelihood strategies within their households, we shall show how everyday repetitive acts by RMW contribute to micro-transformations of a situated gender ideology.

The remainder of the article is organised in five sections. First, we elaborate our conceptual framework. After outlining the study area and the data collection process, we discuss the changing expectations towards women in the study area. We then investigate the reintegration experiences of RMW with a focus on their everyday decision-making about livelihood generation within their households. In the conclusion, we discuss the importance of the findings for understanding the co-constitution of gender, household and place in making visible the contradictory micro-transformations of gender, household and place occurring in the RMW’s everyday lives.

Gender, household and agency

In order to examine the reintegration experiences of RMW, we focus on their households as spaces within which gender is performed and agency is exercised through their everyday decision-making on livelihood generation. These decisions are understood as organised through practices of moral obligation by household members towards their joint well-being (Cheal 1989), as opposed to self-maximising of own well-being by individual household members. There is an inherent tension between joint and individual well-being that requires negotiation, as elaborated by household bargaining models (Agarwal 1997; Sen 1990). Household members have to strike a balance between cooperation and conflict with regard to intra-household resource allocation and distribution, particularly in a context of gender inequality. While household members are to support their joint well-being, intra-household dynamics reflect the historically developed unequal access to resources between and among men and women (Carr 2008; Kabeer 1994). However, as Jackson cautions (2007), such dynamics do not automatically translate into women’s subordination. In large parts of Western Africa, male and female household members use different livelihood strategies and their incomes are kept in ‘separate purses’ and used for different purposes (Clark 1994; Guyer 1988). This underpins the importance of conceptualising households as differentiated. Only when doing so, RMW’s everyday decision-making on livelihood strategies while simultaneously acknowledging their moral obligations within the households can be understood.

Building on Butler’s (1990, 1997) notion of gender as process, over the last two decades, feminist geographers have challenged the understanding of gender as a binary construction of gender roles assigned to men and women by a given culture. When gender is reduced to gender roles, we miss how different intra-household dynamics can produce multiple, often contradictory and shifting gendered subjectivities. For example, reducing gender to gender roles would obscure the dialectical relations between intra-household dynamics and gendered subjectivities within which RMW’s decision-making about livelihood strategies is performed. Similarly, it would obscure the view on the shifting ways in which male and senior female household members exercise dominance as well as on how RMW resist domination while simultaneously meeting the moral obligation to produce joint well-being or reduce risk (cf. Jackson 2007). Conceptualising gender as process enables us to illuminate the complex fluid interplay between gender, household positions and other essential aspects of cultural and social processes.

The discussion above echoes the fundamental claim of feminist geographers that gender cannot be examined irrespective of space and place. Acknowledging the validity of this claim, we contextualise RMW’s reintegration experiences by seeing gender as produced in space and place (Massey 1994). Joining a number of feminist geographers who have paid attention to the domestic spaces of women’s everyday life (e.g. Domosh 1998; Hanrahan 2015; Johnson 2006; Supski 2006), in this study, space and place apply to RMW’s households in a rural Dagomba community in the Northern Region. We conceptualise gender, household and place as co-constituted through specific intra-household dynamics that reflect the historically developed unequal access to resources between and among male and female household members and the different livelihood strategies used by them. The co-constitution of gender, household and place makes visible the dynamics of gender within RMW’s households, where specific intra-household dynamics shape and are shaped by the choices differently positioned RMW make regarding livelihood strategies in the studied community. It illuminates the ways in which RMW exercise agency to deploy strategies to learn to live together with household members and support their joint well-being in everyday life.

A study of RMW’s agency requires a nuanced understanding of power and of their attempts to meet their moral obligations by exercising power over resources within their households, which is different from power in the sense of control over others (Kabeer 2005). It suggests a more Foucauldian (1991) understanding of power, not only as control over others but also as the exercise of individual agency. As Butler (1997) notes, the subject emerges through subjection to the rules of discourse that are manifested through appropriate performance (see also Gibson, Law, and McKay 2001). Subjection does not only entail what ‘unilaterally acts on a given individual as a form of domination but also [what] activates or forms the subject’ (Butler 1997, 84), a conceptualisation that concurs with Scott’s (1988) understanding of agency as enacted through actions taken in specific contexts. Such actions are not entirely autonomous or without constraints because outside forces condition agency. This subjection-activation or subjectivation process applies to young circular migrant women’s economic empowerment afforded by livelihood strategies in both northern and southern Ghana that emerge with subjectivation through intergenerational and gender relations within their northern households (Ungruhe 2011). If resistance is thought to come with subjection (Butler 1997; Gibson, Law, and McKay 2001) and if the reproduction of social relationships does not necessarily negate women’s agency (cf. Hanrahan 2015), then it becomes possible to see not only how RMW’s subjection through performances comply with the existing gendered social expectations but also how they use the context-specific exercise of their agency to navigate, negotiate and change power within delimited domestic spaces. This understanding recognises women’s complex agency that facilitates everyday contradictory micro-transformations more fully than just limiting attention to women’s agency in their large-scale resistance to structure (cf. Sato 2014).

Having discussed the conceptual framework, we now describe the study area and data collection process. After providing the discussion on the changing expectations towards women in the study area, we will investigate the reintegration experiences of RMW with a focus on their everyday decision-making acts over livelihood generation within their Dagomba households in northern Ghana.

Study area and data collection

Data collection was done between June 2012 and August 2013 in Savelugu, Nanton Tolon and the Tamale periphery districts in the Northern Region (see Figure 1) and in Accra. Nantoma² is a rural village located among a cluster of ethnic Dagomba communities in the four districts mentioned above. In the Northern Region, Dagombas are predominantly Muslims. Livelihoods are primarily based on small-scale subsistence farming (Apusigah 2009). The residence pattern is patrilocal with households being male-headed units and most households living in extended family compounds (Brown 1996). The number of nuclear family households is smaller. Many marriages are polygynous. The kinship system is patrilineal, which entitles men to land. For farmland, women are dependent on their husbands, and their husband’s death or divorce precipitates loss of access to land (Adeetuk 1991). Within the gendered division of labour in the household, young and adult women typically perform a double shift of household work and farming.

Figure 1. Map showing Ghana, Northern Region, with Savelugu, Nanton, Tolon and Tamale periphery districts and Accra. Source: Survey Department.

The study was designed in three phases. The first phase involved exploratory interviews with key informants in Old Fadama (OF), a squatter community in Accra alongside the OF Market. These initial interviews led to the interviews with families, relatives and friends of migrant women working in OF and also with RMW, women who never migrated and village heads in the migrant women’s places of origin in the Northern Region. In the second phase, based on a survey of 230 migrant women in OF of which 114 came from four Dagomba districts, migrant women from these villages were interviewed in Accra on their movement to Accra and on their return from Accra to their villages. In the last phase, focus group discussions (FGDs) (six participants each) were conducted both in Accra and in Nantoma. The four FGDs in Accra with 12 migrant women traders in two different age categories (15–25 and 26–50+ years) were used to provide the background contexts to RMW’s reintegration experiences. In Nantoma, seven FGDs were conducted with 30 women (RMW, mothers, female relatives and never migrated women with and without intentions to migrate) and 12 men (fathers and male relatives). The FGD topic lists were developed based on the analysis of data collected in the first two phases. There were three key themes: decision-making about livelihood strategies within households, challenges encountered and strategies adopted to overcome them. The life histories of two RMW were also recorded in order to gain insight into their experiences in decision-making about livelihood strategies in relation to important stages in their life course. FGDs and life history interviews were audio recorded, transcribed from Dagbani into English and analysed using qualitative content analysis. The texts were systematically coded in relation to topics and concepts. Quotes that most clearly addressed and illustrated the key themes were selected for presentation. Observations in context were utilised throughout the research process in order to triangulate these with insights on women’s experience, activities and social relations gained from their verbal accounts.

Having described the study area and data collection process, we now discuss the changing social expectations towards women in the studied Dagomba community and what practices (returned) migrant women bring to the changes within which RMW experience reintegration.

Changing social expectations towards women

A situated gender ideology underlies social practices that shape women’s mobility and decision-making about household livelihood generation (cf. Porter 2011). Women who engage in labour migration of the sort studied here generally have little education (Abdul-Korah 2011; Hashim 2005; Kwankye 2012). When these women remain in their places of origin, they are expected to comply with the authority of the elderly men in the household (Abdul-Korah 2011; Ungruhe 2011), including on the subject of when and with whom to marry. Fuseina (age 22, RMW) illustrated how this expectation shaped the life of her older sisters:

My two elder sisters got married to elderly men, but I was not interested in getting married early and helping a husband to farm. In the South, there is no tedious harvesting of crops and difficulty with cultivation or hard work at home.

Early marriage, marriage to men who are much older and working the double shift are all considered undesirable by young women (cf. Pickbourn 2011). From these views held by young women emerges an opposition of spaces: the household in the area of origin where young women face undesirable practices and expectations and Accra where this is not the case. This spatial construction is indicated in Fuseina’s partial subjection to the situated gender ideology of her rural home. It is subjection since if Fuseina denied or ignored this ideology, she would not make the comparison, and it is partial insofar as it may be circumvented by migration.

The agency migrant women exercise is contradictory since it emerges from the complex dialectical processes of subjection to the rules of discourse and activation. While migration is partly constructed by women as an individual means to escape from undesirable expectations and practices, their pursuit of this livelihood strategy is also inspired by moral obligations to support their parental household by reducing the numbers of mouths to be fed (Ungruhe 2011) and by providing remittances (Pickbourn 2011). Additionally, Hawa (age 28, RMW) indicated migration as a livelihood strategy to prepare marriage items for the future marital household (see also Hashim 2005; Ungruhe 2011), as is apparent from the following quote:

We move to Accra in order to secure money to purchase kitchenware through our own income-generating activities. When a woman is able to contribute to her future home, she could gain self-respect. That would not only make us happy but also a better wife.

This motive for migration of young unmarried women relates to the fact that mothers who used to prepare marriage items for their daughter’s marriage are no longer able to do so due to economic and ecological changes (see also Pickbourn 2011; Ungruhe 2011).³ Growing up in a particular cultural setting, young unmarried women learn what lives they do not want to live. One of those is that of early marriage to elderly men and another is the often impoverished and isolated life of divorced women or neglected wives who are seen as failures. Furthermore, given the choice between a traditional and a religious marriage, these young women from resource-poor households strongly prefer a religious marriage, even if more costly, because in that case, divorce requires permission from the religious authorities who are known for making divorce difficult. Additionally, young unmarried women prefer men from their place of origin. They expressed their dissatisfaction with southern men who allegedly would not meet the norm of married men who look after their wives throughout their lifetime. It is in this context these women migrated to Accra where most of them are engaged in petty trading. They navigate trading of fresh produce, sachet water, cooked food or tea by combining a variety of market- and non-market-based strategies that are supported by ethnic ties. They juggle the hours they spend on trading and on what would be necessary for themselves and for their family (Tufuor et al. 2015). Their migration, livelihood strategies and consumption practices are contradictory: they are neither a total affirmation nor a rejection of their formative gender ideology. On the one hand, the women exercise agency to achieve individual autonomy, fulfil their moral obligation to their household of origin and secure better marriage prospects, which transform the gendered power relations to some extent. On the other hand, however, these practices signify women’s complicity in the reproduction of gender relations that constrain their agency, which delimits their transformational power.

Despite their own construction of domestic space in their place of origin as filled with undesirable expectations and practices, the migrant women we interviewed desired to occupy it upon their return. As in other West African patrilocal groups (cf. Hanrahan 2015), also among the Dagomba, upon marriage, a woman joins the husband’s household, in which the kitchen is her space. A newly-wed wife brings items, such as pots, clothes and jewellery. These belong to her and can be disposed of as she likes. She moves into a compound with senior women, be they the husband’s mother, wives of her husband’s brothers and, if the marriage is polygynous, co-wives. She is expected to become a wife by learning the rules of the new household through building new relations not only with her husband but also with the other women in the household. At some point, she becomes a senior woman in the household whose authority is acknowledged by the younger women, among the Dagomba referred to by the title of ‘cooking wife’ (Pickbourn 2011). When a household has more than one cooking wife, they take turns in assuming responsibilities, usually on a weekly rotation. Generating income by selling surplus vegetables is a socially accepted practice for cooking wives. They use their income to supplement the shortfall in ‘chop money’⁴ received from her husband for domestic food consumption and the expenditures on items such as children’s education and clothing and daughters’ dowries (cf. Pickbourn 2011). It should be noted that the space they desire to occupy upon their return is different from that of young women who married early through traditional marriage. The space they desire is supported by their own acquired goods and secured by a religious marriage.

Although seemingly rigid expectations towards women were expressed in their place of origin, expectations of migrant women have been changing. Once young RMW were thought to threaten male authority (Abdul-Korah 2011), but new practices concerning remittances, gifts, dresses, hairdos and mannerism have prompted changes in the expectations towards and the appraisal of young migrant women. Whereas Pickbourn (2011) reported rather negative male views on female migration in 2007, the following quote from the FGDs with fathers and uncles in Nantoma acknowledges the migrant women’s contributions to their household of origin and reveals a positive appraisal:

Our daughters are feeding the family. It is no more the case that young women cannot decide on their partners. They are enlightened and are exposed to different social settings. They speak several languages, eat and dress differently and are held in high esteem.

These changes in expectations towards young unmarried migrant women by RMW’s fathers and uncles should be taken seriously. In a patrilineal community, where elderly men historically decide who marries whom, senior men’s acceptance that young RMW may influence the selection of their marriage partner constitutes a major transformation in the situated gender ideology. This acceptance echoes the finding by Abdul-Korah (2011, 396) in the neighbouring Upper West Region who heard elderly men saying that ‘now if you have only sons, you are dead’. While there is no reason to believe that this perception is shared by the majority, at least it shows that social expectations towards young women are changing.

A desire to set up a domestic place of their own is also important for women who experienced neglect in marriage and divorce. Their subjection to a societal view on themselves as ‘failures’ is reflected in their strong preference for not returning to their parental household. In the often polygynous extended family households, this subjection and fear of conflicts with brothers and females-in-law encourage them to try to build a separate room or house of their own. Their subjection though a formative gender ideology that incites expectations induces a strong motivation to migrate and save money through trading in Accra. While certainly not always the case, there are successful migrant women who were able to accumulate capital to build their own semi-detached dwellings in their place of origin. They use these spaces when they visit, if they still live in Accra, in the hope of settling back at some point in their life. A never migrated woman commented:

We see new houses springing up. If you care to find out, you’ll find that the owners are migrant women. When you enter such houses during their visits on occasions such as funerals, the interiors of these houses look good with new appliances.

Being able to build a separate domestic space also contributes to the change in expectations towards women who migrate. The practices of divorced women and neglected wives that draw on their experiences in Accra and that do not align with local expectations contribute to changing perceptions towards migrant women in a diversity of ways.

Everyday lives of RMW

The fact that social expectations towards women are changing does not mean that RMW face no difficulty in getting reintegrated into their place of origin upon their return. The realities often faced by RMW are to the contrary. The unmarried migrant women we interviewed in Accra return to their place of origin in the hope of getting married to a man from there and they desire to set up their own domestic place with the newly acquired items. But, realising this desire is not easy. Once back in their place of origin, RMW need to adjust:

When they [MW] return and marry, they have to re-adjust to the village life and this sometimes poses difficulties because of the influences of city life. They find living with their husband’s family challenging. The family size is overwhelming. They are unable to mingle freely with all family members in their new home.

The domestic space RMW desire is filled with the marriage items they prepared and secured by religious marriage. Their imagined domestic space excludes undesirable intra-household dynamics, a large family and a heavy work load. However, although their subjectivities were transformed during their time in Accra, once back in their place of origin, married RMW are socially pressured to learn the rules of the new household through building new relations not only with the husband but also with the senior women in the household. Unmarried RMW also face readjustments. In Nantoma, an elderly married woman explained:

Here, if daughters go on errands outside and wander about, they may receive beatings because they made moves that parents do not like.

Unmarried RMW face fewer restrictions than married women, but even so, they are continuously monitored by parents and are not permitted to wander about on their own, just as senior women and husbands keep married women in check.

In the following, by drawing on the analytical tools of gender as process, the co-constitution of gender, households and place and power as double-edged process, we shall make visible the multiple and contradictory ways in which RMW experience reintegration in their households in the rural north. The section is organised using the categories of RMW that emerged based on differences related to their marital status, their social position within different household arrangements and their trading aspirations. These categories are: (1) unmarried RMW; (2) married RMW who are unable to engage in petty trading due to the disapproval from household members; (3) married RMW who plan to start petty trading in the future; (4) married RMW whose petty trading causes conflict; (5) married RMW whose household members accept their petty trading; and (6) RMW who returned with illness and/or a child out of wedlock. Recognising the different co-constitutions of gender and household in the rural Dagomba North enables us to see the contradictory micro-transformations of gender, households and place happening in RMW’s everyday lives.

Unmarried RMW

Most young unmarried RWM seek life security through marriage upon return. Thus, they spend what they managed to save while in Accra on marriage items and the ceremony. After the ceremony, most of them are left with few to no savings. But, not all unmarried RMW follow this path. Aisha, unmarried RMW (aged 26), lives in a room she built for herself in her parental compound and helps her mother with household tasks and combines this with her fish and salt trading activity. She tells why not marrying would be also an option:

When you return with money, you may decide to live on your own, because you will have enough to support yourself and start some business. When women get married, that independence they enjoyed in Accra ends. Husbands do not allow wives to carry out trading even within the village.

Not marrying is an option for some RMW who return with money. Aisha recognises restrictions on married women’s mobility and livelihood strategies imposed by husbands. This recognition, coupled with trading skills and independence developed in Accra, enables Aisha not to invest in marriage but to use the savings to set up her own hearth and business, at least temporarily. RMW’s ability to remain single and the acceptance of this by parental household members are a significant change in a patrilineal society, just as elderly men’s acceptance of young women choosing their own marriage partner (see above). Yet, Aisha’s independence does not come automatically. She negotiates for her independence with senior female household members by effectuating her moral obligation to support the household with the income generated from her trading activity.

Married RMW

After marriage, the often expressed interest of most RMW is to contribute to their household’s livelihood through petty trading. While perceptions towards migrant women of some people are changing, others (e.g. some male relatives and elderly married women who did not migrate) insist that a good wife must stay out of the public space. A good junior wife is to contribute to the household economy through performing her double shift and she is not to leave home and engage in trading. Facing this norm, it is a big challenge to start petty trading. A married RMW living with senior females-in-law mentioned that:

If your husband understands and there are senior female-in-laws with no instructions on where you cannot go, then count yourself lucky and start with selling some goods the villagers patronise like soap and salt.

As indicated, husbands and senior females-in-law play significant roles in RMW’s mobility and decision-making about livelihood strategies. However, while having strict husbands and/or senior females-in-law does matter, their authority is not absolute but, as shown below, depends on specific household compositions.

Married RMW who are unable to trade

While married RMW want to contribute to their households by generating income from petty trading, their husbands and/or the senior females-in-law in the households often do not permit them to do so. In Nantoma, elderly married women, made up of mothers and aunties, explained:

We all work in the farms. We all harvest shear nuts, groundnuts and maize. No, they [RMW] cannot refuse because here they are under control, not as if they were there [Accra]. After marriage they cannot go out without the husband’s approval. Yes, there are restrictions to what they can do here.

Senior women say it is a husband who restricts RMW’s mobility and decisions over livelihood strategies. Female relatives and never migrated but married women on the other hand mentioned that it is senior females-in-law, i.e. cooking wives, who influence RMW’s decision-making about the organisation of the domestic space:

There is no independence when senior females in-laws start problems in your home. Our household activities are the same, nothing has changed. We organise the entire cooking, sweeping and fetching water. If you marry into a big compound, then sorry for you.

Regardless of whether husbands or senior females-in-law or both constrain RMW’s agency, in households with more than one senior woman, the organisation of the kitchen is complex and continuously negotiated among female household members. This gendered intra-generational household dynamic constrains RMW who aspire to start home-based trading. Confronted with the new realities, RMW often become nostalgic. A married RMW, who lives with senior females-in-law and engage in petty trading, recollected her life in Accra:

Trading in Accra is far better than here in the North. I enjoyed more freedom there. I could use the income I earned at my own will. No one prevented me from doing what I wanted.

However, not being able to trade should not be read as RMW completely accepting the rules set by their husbands and senior females-in-law. ‘Unlucky’ ones do not push their own agenda, at least temporarily. Not starting petty trading is a compromise between the moral obligations to maintain the household through marriage and secure income for the household through petty trading. The decision shows that at a specific moment of the reintegration context, the second choice is not worth more than the first in terms of the women’s moral obligations to and within their households. If the latter to be realised, RMW have to strike a good balance between the two, which requires them to build cooperative interpersonal relationships with their husbands and senior females-in-law.

Married RMW who plan to start petty trading in the future

Not being able to trade is often a temporary condition. Some RMW consciously set the stage within their own homes in such a way that they are able to start trading. Fawzia, a RWM who does not live with her in-laws (aged 37, life history interview), cultivates groundnuts to sell later. In order to make this market gardening acceptable within her household, she carefully planned and then managed the amount of time spent on domestic work and farming, so that she is able to both trade and meet the standards held by her husband. She combines this with reducing the time spent on some reproductive activities, such as resting, thus performing a triple shift in order to produce extra groundnuts. This is difficult, but she has hope:

I intend to harvest the groundnuts from my husband’s farm to sell in Tamale. I hope to have a good life here by making some money through small trading business. It will be difficult, but I’ll give it a try.

She wants to sell groundnuts to buy household consumables that are not locally produced (e.g. salt, onion and fish). If Fawzia were fully subjected through the rules set by her husband and culture, she would not even consider starting trading. Fawzia’s preparation requires everyday careful management of both her time and the relationship with her husband. This management must interweave diverse subjectivities and moral obligations. It requires using the skills and competencies acquired while trading in Accra and – at the same time – partial subjection to the situated gender ideology that rules her household. Her desire to contribute to the household livelihood encourages her to take up practices that simultaneously threaten and secure her marriage life.

Married RMW whose petty trading causes conflicts

Internalising social expectations towards junior married women that exclude generating income through petty trading, RMW carefully manoeuvre to convince senior household members about how generating livelihood is necessary for the well-being of the household. Then, some convinced household members may accept their petty trading. Boyaa (aged 31, living with her senior females-in-law) explained the path she took:

Initially, I seldom went out and was not happy with the restrictions. That prompted me to start looking for something to sell. A friend in Accra suggested I contact a merchant in Tamale where I purchased sugar, soap and mobile phone top-up credit. My husband often threatened to go for a second wife and my senior female-in-laws made me spend more time on cooking. I explained that I couldn’t stop because we need the money. I convinced him that the profits would help us buy new things for our household.

In her account, Boyaa conveys how the urgency to buy necessary items for her and her child, which is a socially expected responsibility for a mother when her husband is unable to provide those, prompted her to negotiate permission for her petty trading with her husband and senior females-in-law. To negotiate terms beyond the normative gendered division of labour in order to better discharge her moral obligation to support the household required her careful balancing of the interpersonal relationships with her husband and senior females-in-law. She tries to maintain acceptable interpersonal relationships with her husband and senior females-in-law by performing more cooking tasks than required of her to safeguard the security of her marriage in the context of her husband threatening to go for a second wife. The immediate threat that her husband may take a second wife and her decision to take on more cooking tasks in combination with the profits from her trading built solidarity with females-in-law and made this negotiation a success, at least temporarily.

That once RMW are able to start petty trading does not mean that conflicts are over. Nuti (aged 28, not living with in-laws) faced difficulties with her husband at the initial stage of starting her business. She narrated:

When I joined my husband, he would ask me to do things for him, knowing I had placed a table outside and displayed some wares for sale. If I told him to wait a while, he would get angry. But my work is important and helps all of us. I use it to support the purchasing of ingredients for our soup.

Lingering conflicts initiated by her husband require a continuous response by Nuti. Nuti’s everyday struggles to juggle her triple shift capture a constantly shifting balance between her assertion for the importance of her income from trading and the moral obligation to her household. Nuti’s performance also indicates her subjection to the existing gendered intra-household relations. Her subjection delimits the space for exercising her agency, but it simultaneously activates her to expand the boundary of what is considered to be a socially accepted gender division of labour, albeit partially reproducing it.

Azara, a married RMW (aged 30), lives with her in-laws and contributes to her household livelihood by trading cloths. Hence, she could be categorised as ‘lucky’. However, her practices illustrate that luck is not a given but has to be produced through everyday repetitive practices within a specific domestic space over time. The difficulties she experiences derive partially from the fact that she lives with multiple senior females-in-law. At the initial stages of living together and even presently, Azara has been negotiating her mobility and livelihood strategy with her husband and senior females-in-law, who resisted her daily commuting to Tamale initially. As also shown by Porter (2011), in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa, the heavy burden of household work and poor infrastructures, intersecting with a discourse that links women’s mobility and promiscuity, restrict women’s access to markets. As a junior woman in an extended family household with more than one cooking wife, Azara’s proper daily work was to assist her females-in-law with cooking and to help out on the household farm. She makes sure that her petty trading does not come at the expense of her responsibilities as a wife and daughter-in-law. Her thus far successful strategy has been to meet the expectations of her senior females-in-law and to earn enough through her trading to compensate for her absence. Her financial contributions are intended to buy ingredients for the household’s soup and to pay the workers who clear the fields to cultivate vegetables. This balancing practice enables her to discharge her moral obligation as a wife and a daughter-in-law in new ways and meets with the approval of her husband and senior females-in-law today. However, when Azara’s profits from trading no longer offset the inter-generational and interpersonal expectations, her ability to undertake petty trading would be threatened. Azara’s everyday practices produce the inter-generational and interpersonal relations, which reinforce moral mutual commitments by household members to generate livelihood for their joint well-being.

Married RMW whose household members accept their petty trading

Meimuna (aged 29, life history 2, RMW not living with in-laws), at first glance, also seems to be ‘lucky’. She contributes to her household by home-based soap and sugar trading, which is accepted by her husband. She said:

My little trading money goes to cater for small supplies in our household, such as adding to rich ingredients for soup, household utensils and the small-small things in the house. My husband knows that I contribute to his farming activities.

Meimuna uses the income from her petty trading to supplement the chop money from her husband, which is socially expected. Ecological change has reduced the ability of women to grow the ingredients needed for the soup in certain months in a year (cf. Pickbourn 2011). This shortcoming drives RMW with trading skills to food-based petty trading as a complementary livelihood strategy. Recognising her husband’s role as provider, Meimuna presents her contribution as small. This understanding comes from her everyday material practices in her northern household in comparison to that in Accra. She explained:

I could not buy what I wanted since I moved back home because women are to spend money only on ingredients to prepare soup for the household. It is difficult to cope with so many issues at home after my life experience in Accra.

Even though she can generate some income through food-based petty trading and has an understanding husband, Meimuna tells us that the present life is not easy. Albeit self-identified as small, her regular income enables Meimuna to comply with the socially expected responsibility as a wife. Securing ingredients for the soup indicates her partial subjection to the situated gender ideology in her household, yet she uses a role-inappropriate livelihood strategy to do so. Furthermore, it is too easy to dismiss Meimuna’s practice as a sign of her subordination. Taking a more open and positive approach (cf. Jackson 2007), her everyday act could be re-signified as forming a cooperative interpersonal relationship with her husband to produce their joint well-being, even though it partially reproduces the gender ideology.

Divorced RMW with children

Divorced RMW with children tend to pursue different livelihood strategies than young and (un)married RMW. Divorced RMW with children see their children’s education as a primary means to secure their life. Never migrated women indicated that children in RMW families had studied up to secondary school level and even beyond. Laardi (aged 49), a single mother RMW living with her aged mother and children, explained:

I needed to make money for my children’s education. After my divorce, I moved to Accra and sent money to my mother to look after my children in order for them to attain the higher educational level.

With limited livelihood opportunities as well as the social pressure of the negative label attached to divorced women in her place of origin, when her children were young, Laardi left them to her mother and searched for a livelihood in Accra. She sent a portion of her income from petty trading to her mother in order to support her children’s upbringing and education (also reported by Pickbourn 2011). Once her children completed higher education, she came back to her place of origin to settle down and continues to sell beans to some traders from Accra. In a context where there is no social safety net for elderly divorced women and single mothers, RMW like Laardi recognise their children’s education as a long-term livelihood strategy.

RMW who returned with illness and/or a child out of wedlock

Finally, there is a subject position beyond lucky and unlucky RMW, namely that of RMW who come back unwillingly with a child born out of wedlock and/or with HIV/AIDS. These women are also seen as ‘failures’. They fall back on their parental home to which they become a burden as they are temporarily or permanently unable to contribute to the household livelihood generation, get married or financially support themselves. These women often find the conditions in their parental household unbearable. While RMW with HIV/AIDS are physically unable to leave again, RMW with a child out of wedlock may leave the child behind, in the care of their mothers, and return to Accra to look for a livelihood. This experience is similar to that of the divorced single mother Laardi mentioned above. It should also be noted that each time migrant women come back with a child born out of wedlock or with HIV/AIDS, the notion that southern men are untrustworthy as life partners is reinforced. This in turn bolsters young unmarried women’s preference for northern men, as they are thought to have compatible expectations as to what men should do. Hence, the notion that northern men are preferable in part facilitates both out- and return migration of young unmarried women.

Conclusion

Gender, households and place are constituted slightly differently each time anew through the diversity of ways in which subjectivities of RMW are produced through their decisions about livelihood strategies within their respective households in the rural Dagomba North. ‘Lucky-ness’ depends neither just on RMW’s ability to trade and nor entirely on household compositions (e.g. living without in-laws) but on RMW’s ability to produce cooperative inter- and intra-household relationships with their husbands and senior females-in-law on an everyday basis. RMW constantly negotiate inter- and intra-personal relationships through juggling the multiple subjectivities of being a wife, daughter-in-law, mother and/or petty commodity producer and trader. Furthermore, RMW’s everyday balancing performances are contradictory. They simultaneously reproduce and transform the prevailing gendered power relations within the households. Recognising gender as process and understanding power as a double-edged process of subjection and activation (Butler 1997; Gibson, Law, and McKay 2001) enabled us to shed light on the multiple and contradictory ways in which RMW enact agency over decision-making about livelihood strategies within their households in the distinct sociocultural setting. By making these visible, we gained a nuanced understanding of the dynamic relationships between gender, households and place. RMW’s performances illustrate their moral obligation to their household’s joint well-being and the continuous balancing involved in these performances reveals the co-constitution of gender, household and place as an ever-shifting process.

The contradictions in RMW’s everyday performances within the households produce ‘cracks’ in the hegemonic gender ideology. RMW reproduce the gendered division of labour through their own practices. Some do just that, at least temporarily. Others are able to develop cooperative relationships with their household members and – at the same time – defend and sustain their assets and capabilities to eventually transform these into desired livelihood outcomes. However, RMW’s ability to engage in trading should be recognised as an everyday achievement: failing to maintain the cooperative relationships with their male and senior female household members would be the end of their trading activities. Even though RMW reproduce the situated gender ideologies by their performances, they do so only to a certain extent because these everyday performances may alter the terms of their position within a restricted gendered relation. Their ambivalence about being full-time housewives and preference to be defined also as traders signal transformations. The ability to see the multiple ways in which gender, households and place are co-constituted and the micro-transformations that are already happening make it possible to identify context-specific strategies to facilitate positive and mitigate negative transformations (cf. Sato 2014).

Based on this study, we suggest a few directions for future research. As shown in the existing studies (Kwankye 2012; Ungruhe 2011), northern women from a young age engage in circular labour migration. It might be that marriage in their place of origin does not necessarily put a stop to that circular migration. A longitudinal study, such as the intergenerational study by Wolf (1992) – yet drawing on gender as process and using a life course perspective – would deepen our understanding of the ongoing processes of social transformation triggered by women’s out- and return migration. Second, as suggested by Elmhirst (2007), to better assess the complex gender transformations, the effects of young women’s out- and return migration on masculinities could be investigated by working with juvenile male cohorts left behind as well as returned from migration (Ungruhe 2010). This would increase our understanding of the different everyday experiences and practices of returned migrants with multiple subject positions. Lastly, stimulated by an insight from Gibson, Law, and McKay (2001), action research could be conducted to understand effective links between household and community economies. In Accra, the communities of migrant women provided mutual support (Tufuor et al. 2015). Action research could assist struggling RMW to find collective strategies to extend their moral obligations beyond their households and produce a community economy by, for example, pooling resources for collective livelihood generation.

Notes on contributors

Theresa Tufuor earned her PhD from Wageningen University, the Netherlands in 2015. Her PhD thesis is entitled ‘Aspirations and Everyday Life of Single Migrant Women in Ghana’. She received her master’s degree in Urban Housing Management from Erasmus University, the Netherlands. Her research interests are gender, livelihoods, informal economy and human settlement issues. Prior to her appointment as a researcher, she worked on gender issues as a public officer at the Ministry of Housing in Ghana. She is a member of the Ghana Women’s Land Trust (GAWLAT), an international network dedicated to increasing women’s access to land and housing and control of resources to manage livelihoods and reduce poverty. Her current position is policy development and research in the Human Settlement Division of the Housing Ministry.

Chizu Sato is a lecturer and researcher in the Sociology of Consumption and Households group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. She received her doctorate in Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She completed her graduate certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies in the UMass department of Women’s Studies. Her research interest lies in the intersection of women, empowerment and development. Her current research investigates how corporate-led development practices, such as direct selling in the global South and ethical consumption via cause marketing in the global North, shape our identity and everyday practices and interact with the material and ideological structures that produce transnational inequalities.

Anke Niehof was trained as an anthropologist and a demographer. In 1985, she obtained her doctorate at Leiden University on the basis of a thesis entitled ‘Women and Fertility in Madura, Indonesia’. Since 1993 and until her retirement in April 2013, she held the chair of Sociology of Consumers and Households at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. She has published extensively on household livelihood and food security, women’s reproductive health, care and impacts of HIV and AIDS in Africa. Between 2002 and 2012, she led the AWLAE Project, in which 20 women scholars from 11 African countries did their PhD studies at Wageningen University on topics relating to the gendered impacts of HIV and AIDS on rural livelihoods and food systems in sub-Saharan Africa. Gender and agency are important perspectives in her work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Acknowledgements

We thank all participants in our research for their contribution. We also thank Mariama Awumbilla, Bettina Bock and Annelies Zoomers for their valuable suggestions. We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers and editor for their thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Peter Tamas provided us with his useful assistance.

Notes

1. There are women who leave the rural north repeatedly for various periods of time to accomplish some specific goals. Studying this group of women requires a separate study.

2. Nantoma is a pseudonym as are the names of persons cited in the text.

3. Though in smaller numbers, young men also participate in labour migration for the preparation of bridewealth (Ungruhe 2010).

4. Chop money is given by men to their wives each week or month for the domestic consumption fund, including for food consumption.