Dorte Thorsen

'We Help Our Husbands!': Negotiating the Household Budget in Rural Burkina Faso

This article addresses the intra-household division of responsibilities among the Bisa and Mossi in south-eastern Burkina Faso. Based on a detailed village study of the land use which revealed that women cultivated 31 per cent of all the land in 1997, gendered practices in household budgeting are investigated. Although the proportion of womens own-account agriculture suggests that they contribute substantially to household consumption, the majority of women maintain that they only help their husbands when contributing in areas that, ideologically, are his responsibility, for example by providing food and by paying school fees and materials. In this way, women keep within the norms of showing respect for the husband but, at the same time, they may press him to fulfil his obligations

Jeans, Bicycles and Mobile Phones: Adolescent Migrants’ Material Consumption in Burkina Faso

African children are rarely associated with globalization and the commercialization of childhood through consumerism, except for their participation in the global supply chain as child labor. 1 Accordingly, they are represented as a uniform category despite the fact that great inequalities in wealth and opportunity exist both across and within countries. International discourses on child protection in the global South tend to see those entering the world of paid work as being deprived of their childhood (Bourdillon 2006; Nieuwenhuys 2007). Such discourses advocate an essentially Eurocentric and middle-class type of childhood in which work is not readily accepted as a means of accumulating practical and social skills and know-how (Bourdillon forthcoming; Razy and Rodet 2011). With the aim of protecting children from hazardous and exploitative work, young people up to the age of 18 are categorized as children (cf. International Labor Office [ILO] Convention No. 182). The idea that adolescents can migrate to find work on their own initiative and for material reasons beyond meeting basic needs is overshadowed by representations of migrant children as forced migrants, victims of trafficking or exploitation (cf. Robson 2010; Human Rights Watch 2007; ILO 2001, 2010).

Marginal producers or breadwinners : Women's cropping strategies and access to agricultural key resources in Boulgou province, Burkina Faso

Abstract This paper focuses on womens role as food producers in subsistence agricultural systems in southeastern Burkina Faso. It challenges the narrative that describes women as marginal producers of major food crops like millet. Based on a detailed study at the village level of land use, the intra-household distribution of key resources such as labour and land is investigated. It links female production strategies with womens responsibilities within the household, particularly in their own hearth-hold. Contrary to the locally dominant perception, one that presents women as marginal producers, the actual land use pattern in the study village reveals that women cultivate as much as 37% of the total cultivated area. Regarding crop choices, it is further revealed that women do not solely grow groundnuts but allocate a considerable proportion of their land to millet. This millet is primarily used for hearth-hold consumption. Geografisk Tidsskrift, Danish Journal of Geography 100: 47–59.

Reconfiguring migration: an introduction

Mobility patterns in Africa are changing. They never were fixed, but they have been embedded for centuries in the policy regimes regulating local, regional and global economies. However, currently, the intersection of global politics of securitization and African everyday politics governed by inequality, disenchantment, survival and aspiration has accelerated changes. This themed section is concerned with the social effects of these changes as Africans struggle to attain their goals, whether they are migrants or not.

Temporalités, savoir-faire et modes d’action des enfants travailleurs migrants au sein de la parenté élargie en Afrique de l’Ouest

This article focuses on migrant children in West Africa in contexts where independent migrations during childhood constitute the norm rather than the exception. The article examines how the relative age and gender of a child influence his/her trajectory. It is based on the biographies of two young domestic workers – a girl in Côte-d’Ivoire and a boy in Burkina Faso. In describing their trajectories during the first eight to ten years of their migration to the city, this article shows that ideas surrounding age-appropriate work and the acquisition of new skills allow both girls and boys to increasingly exercise more power over their own lives. From these detailed trajectories it becomes clear that the dominant institutional categories, on the one hand, mask the diversity of activities of these very young migrants. On the other hand, they conceal the diachronic changes that take place in the course of their migratory work experience.