PEASANT MIGRATIONS AND RURAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN NIGER: A STUDY OF INCORPORATION WITHIN A WEST AFRICAN CAPITALIST REGIONAL ECONOMY, C. 1875 TO C. 1982 (REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT, AGRARIAN CHANGE, CLASS FORMATION, LABOR PROCESS, HOUSEHOLD REPRODUCTION)

This is a study of peasant migrations from the Dosso area of southwestern Niger to areas of the West African Guinea Coast from shortly after 1900 through the early 1980s. During this time, Dosso area peasant households became and remain linked to migrants' areas of destination in growth-pole areas of a West African capitalist regional economy through flows of labor power, remittances, and commodities. The regional economy was formed and is sustained by the impact of combined and uneven development characteristic of peripheral capitalism.;Finally, migrations may undermine the precarious social reproduction of the domestic economy they appear to make possible. Continuing access to subsidized food grains sold by the government may lead to a further breakdown of what is a partial commitment by Dosso area peasants to rainfed agricultural production.;Archival and secondary source materials are used to reconstruct the growth of the regional economy from early during the nineteenth century, and to examine forms of peasant migrations from the Dosso area to growth-pole areas from the early years of this century through the present. Evidence from village research during 1981 and 1982 is used to examine the connection between current forms of migrations and peasant survival in the area. Very little of migrants' earnings is used to improve rainfed agricultural production, the major source of domestic food grains. Rather than feeding accumulation through investment in production or trade, migrations appear, for many households, simply to make survival possible. Food grains which are not produced in sufficient quantities for household consumption are purchased with migrants' earnings. At the same time, however, the ties which make precarious social reproduction possible in the Dosso area render peasant households heavily dependent on the fortunes of growth-pole areas in the regional economy. Dosso peasant households have become highly vulnerable to fluctuations in the world market for agricultural commodities upon which the extroverted development of the Guinea Coast depends, and upon which the earnings of migrants, as petty traders and laborers in Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria, depend in turn.