Migrant labour and the peasantry in the bechuanaland protectorate, 1930-1965

This article grapples with issues that have largely remained outside the re alms of migrant labour studies in colonial Botswana: the positive input of migrant wages to agricultural production and the effects of migrant wages o n the differentiation of the peasantry. Although this article endorses the conventional view that migrant labour had detrimental effects on crop produ ction and animal husbandry, it departs from previous studies in that it arg ues that the extent to which migrant labour led to 'underdevelopment' has n ot been sufficiently demonstrated. It is also argued that migrant labour ma de it possible for those at the lower level of society to rise though the e merging stratifications of the Tswana, and contributed positively to the ge neral economies of the peasantries in Botswana's reserves.