Bruno Schoumaker

The Demography of Sub-Saharan Africa from the 1950s to the 2000s [A Survey of Changes and a Statistical Assessment]

This chronicle is focused on sub-Saharan Africa (48 nations, 730 million people) and includes both a summary of the major socio-demographic and health changes since the 1950s and a statistical report based on the most reliable recent data on each nation. Particular attention has been given to the size and structure of the population, fertility and its intermediate variables, nuptiality, mortality, child health, migration and population movements, urbanization and access to education. Even though Africa still has the most rapid growth and the youngest population in the world, many changes are in progress. They occur at different speed depending on the country, the region, and the type of residence. As a result, African demographic regimes are diversifying. One major trend is the decline of fertility that has been observed for Africa as a whole for the last fifteen years, with rapid declines in a few countries, but also stagnation in about fifteen others. The age at first marriage is increasing in most countries, but polygyny is resisting rather well. Adult and child mortality have decreased markedly over the last forty years, though at a different pace and with worrisome reversals of trends in recent times in the countries most affected by AIDS. Access to education, particularly for women, is still an issue. The overall situation in sub-Saharan Africa has improved since the 1950s or 1960s, but progress is slower than in other regions in the world and appears reversible or uncertain in the current context of economic crisis, poverty and the AIDS pandemic.

La démographie de l'Afrique au sud du Sahara des années 1950 aux années 2000. Synthèse des changements et bilan statistique

Consacree a l’Afrique au Sud du Sahara (48 pays, 730 millions d’habitants), cette chronique propose a la fois une synthese des grands changements sociodemographiques et sanitaires depuis les annees 1950 et un bilan statistique rassemblant les donnees recentes les plus fiables sur chaque pays. Y sont notamment examines les effectifs et les structures de la population, la fecondite et ses variables intermediaires, la nuptialite, la mortalite, la sante des enfants, les migrations et deplacements de population, l’urbanisation et l’acces a l’education. Si l’Afrique conserve la croissance demographique la plus rapide du monde et a la population la plus jeune, de nombreux changements sont en cours ; mais ils se font, selon les pays, les regions et les milieux d’habitat, a des rythmes variables, conduisant a une diversification croissante des regimes demographiques africains. Parmi les grandes tendances, on observe une baisse de la fecondite pour l’ensemble de l’Afrique depuis une quinzaine d’annees, avec des declins rapides dans quelques pays mais aussi une stagnation dans une quinzaine d’autres. Les âges au mariage augmentent dans la plupart des pays, mais la polygamie resiste plutot bien. La mortalite des adultes et des enfants a sensiblement baisse depuis quarante ans, a des rythmes toutefois variables et avec de recents et preoccupants retournements de tendance dans les pays les plus touches par le sida. L’urbanisation se poursuit. L’acces a l’education, notamment des femmes, demeure un probleme reel. En definitive, la situation de l’Afrique sub-saharienne s’est amelioree depuis les annees 1950 ou 1960, mais les progres – plus moderes que dans les autres regions du monde – apparaissent comme fragiles ou incertains dans le contexte actuel de crise economique, de pauvrete et de pandemie de sida.

Profile: The Ouagadougou Health and Demographic Surveillance System

The Ouagadougou Health and Demographic Surveillance System (Ouaga HDSS), located in five neighbourhoods at the northern periphery of the capital of Burkina Faso, was established in 2008. Data on vital events (births, deaths, unions, migration events) are collected during household visits that have taken place every 10 months. The areas were selected to contrast informal neighbourhoods (∼40 000 residents) with formal areas (40 000 residents), with the aims of understanding the problems of the urban poor, and testing innovative programmes that promote the well-being of this population. People living in informal areas tend to be marginalized in several ways: they are younger, poorer, less educated, farther from public services and more often migrants. Half of the residents live in the Sanitary District of Kossodo and the other half in the District of Sig-Nonghin. The Ouaga HDSS has been used to study health inequalities, conduct a surveillance of typhoid fever, measure water quality in informal areas, study the link between fertility and school investments, test a non-governmental organization (NGO)-led programme of poverty alleviation and test a community-led targeting of the poor eligible for benefits in the urban context. Key informants help maintain a good rapport with the community. The Ouaga HDSS data are available to researchers under certain conditions.

Reunifying versus Living Apart Together Across Borders: A Comparative Analysis of Sub-Saharan Migration to Europe

This article studies the process of reunification in Europe among “living apart together across borders” (LATAB) couples of African origin (DR Congo, Ghana, and Senegal). Couple reunion is conceived as a multilevel process, wherein state selection (through immigration policies in destination countries) interacts with self-selection (at the couple level), under influence of the social context at origin. Based on event history analyses of the MAFE project, empirical results show that LATAB is a majority and durable living arrangement for sub-Saharan migrants, that the odds if reunifying depend on gender and inter-generational relationships, and that restrictive contexts at destination do not deter couple reunion.

A Person-Period Approach to Analysing Birth Histories

The reconstitution of birth histories - or maternity histories - is a widely used approach for collecting data on fertility in developing countries. Since the 1970s with the World Fertility Survey (WFS), and even more so since the mid-1980s with the program of Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), birth histories have become an indispensable source of data for studying fertility levels, trends, and determinants. The principle is well-known: a sample of women are asked about their reproductive history, and the birth dates of each of their children, from the first birth until the time of the survey, are recorded. These birth histories are mainly used to calculate the classic indicators of fertility, in particular fertility rates and total fertility rates, and to reconstitute fertility trends over the past ten to fifteen years. When combined with socio-economic data collected by fertility surveys, they can also be used for explicative analyses of fertility behaviour. Finally, although these data are most often used to study recent fertility, occasionally researchers carry out explanatory analyses that exploit their longitudinal nature. (excerpt)

Distance, Transnational Arrangements, and Return Decisions of Senegalese, Ghanaian, and Congolese Migrants

This article examines the determinants of return of Senegalese, Ghanaian and Congolese migrants in Europe, and the extent to which their return decisions were linked to reasons and circumstances of their initial migration to Europe. We utilize the retrospective life history data collected by the MAFE Project in Senegal, Ghana and DR Congo and six European countries in order to understand whether and how changing conditions in both origin and destination countries, including policies, affect the migration dynamics between Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. The results show how the high cost entailed by this type of transcontinental long distance migration, reinforced by restrictive immigration policies, tend to delay and reduce return in comparison to shorter-distance moves. In addition, brain circulation and transnational family arrangements seem to be at work and seriously question the dominant approach to admission and circulation policies in Europe.

Understanding Transnational Labour Market Trajectories of African-European Migrants: Evidence from the MAFE Survey.

Labor market trajectories of migrants are seldom explored in a longitudinal and comparative perspective. However, a longitudinal approach is crucial for a better understanding of migrants’ long-term occupational attainments, while comparative research is useful to disentangle specificities and general processes across destination and origin countries. This article explores the labor market outcomes of migrants from Senegal, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ghana in different European countries, using the MAFE data to compare their occupational attainments before migration, upon arrival and during the first 10 years of stay in Europe in a longitudinal perspective. Results highlight different pattern of migrants’ selection across destinations, influenced by prior employment status and education, gender and colonial legacies, and which impact subsequent trajectories into the European labor markets. Our analyses also show a severe worsening of migrants’ occupational status in Europe compared to their situation prior to migration, which is the resultant of a dramatic downgrading upon entry and of a slow occupational recovering during the first 10 years of stay in Europe. Results suggest that the educational–occupational mismatch of skilled workers might represent a long-lasting “price” for migrants, unless (further) educational credentials are achieved in destination countries.

Micro Methods: Longitudinal Surveys and Analyses

Longitudinal data offer extraordinary opportunities to study the patterns, causes and consequences of both domestic and international migration. Because they follow people over time, they allow analyzing migration as a process and to describe trajectories. This chapter presents the main issues raised by the production and use of longitudinal data for the study of migration, the solutions adopted so far, and the problems that remain to be solved. It is informed by the experience of a number of surveys carried out in various parts of the world, covering both more developed countries and less developed countries. The first part of the chapter is dedicated to data collection issues. It compares the advantages and drawbacks of prospective and retrospective surveys for the study of migration (i.e., panel vs. life histories), and it exposes the various techniques of data collection at all levels (from the individual to the macro-context). The second part of the chapter concerns data analysis. It firstly examines the conceptual and practical treatment of time in the management of longitudinal data. Then descriptive and causal methods of analysis are presented, with a focus on event history analyses with retrospective data (mainly life tables and discrete-time models, other techniques being however mentioned). New challenges for the collection and analysis of longitudinal data on migration are pointed out in the conclusion.

Changing patterns of Ghanaian migration

Migration has been part of people’s experience in many parts of Africa throughout history (De Bruin et al. 2001) and Ghana is no exception. Migration flows were typically regional due to commerce, forced labor and circulatory nomadic routes. Over the last decades however, migration patterns extended geographically with larger shares of migrants moving to Europe and North America. Even within these regions, African migrant flows have been diversifying (Grillo & Mazzucato 2008). Yet little comparative empirical data exist on migration flows between Africa and Europe and many of the characteristics and changes of these flows are still largely unknown. The objective of this chapter is to first describe international migration patterns from Ghana using the quantitative MAFE household data collected in Kumasi and Accra, Ghana, and second to focus on migration from Ghana to Europe, and back, specifically as it concerns flows between Ghana, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. This second focus uses the MAFE biographic data collected both in Ghana and in Europe.

Migration and Family Life Between Congo and Europe

In this chapter, we use the MAFE data to study the relationships between migration and family in the context of DR Congo and Europe. Taking advantage of the multi-sited nature of the data, we show that transnational families are quite common. Two thirds of all households from the region of Kinshasa declared having migrant members abroad (whatever their place of residence). Conversely, using the data collected in Europe, we show that a quarter of Congolese migrants in Belgium and UK still had close relatives in Congo at the time of the survey (spouse or children). Adopting a longitudinal approach, we show that living apart across borders is quite often a long-lasting arrangement for Congolese couples, as well as for their children. Results also show that reunification is not a one-way phenomenon: families also reunify in the origin country, when the migrants return. Results suggest that transnational families result from a mix of personal choices and structural constraints.