TO LEAVE OR STAY - TO LEAVE AND TO STAY - KIKUYU MIGRATIONS IN KENYA

Subsequent to population growth, land scarcity and the diminishing yie lds, Kikuyu started a search for arable land. This migration has been extended toward areas which are unsuitable for agriculture, where surv ival strategies of Kikuyu migrants have been analysed. Results of the extended data collection have shown that a range of social practices w ithin the mainly patrimonial families enable them to survive in the se mi-arid savannah on the Laikipia plain (Kenya), Two strategies could b e distinguished: on the levels of the individuals the mobility may be described as personal transhumance, and on the level of the domestic u nits as steps on the various islands of a vertical archipelago; both a re characteristics of a family circulation that constitutes a migrator y scheme prevailing among the Kikuyu, with a model of migratory practi ces which associates individual tactics and the strategies applied by domestic units (Y. D. & B. S.).