Between Aspirations and Realities: Northern Ghanaian Migrant Women and the Dilemma of Household (Re)production in Southern Ghana

A major outcome of the decline of African agriculture and economy in the 1980s was the sustained interest in the studies of agrarian change and the special effort scholars have put into exploring the ways in which domestic and gender relations in regions newly incorporated into the international economy through labor migration were being reshaped. This paper explores the challenges that Dagara migrant women from northwestern Ghana have faced during this period as they have migrated with their husbands to the southern part of the country to take advantage of farming opportunities. It examines the circumstances and reasons behind women's participation in what had been a seasonal migration undertaken by young men, drawing on three women's stories to argue that most migrant women must balance their husbands' projects of accumulation and survival in the south with their own desire to return to their home region in the north—a dilemma that they cannot easily resolve because they lack an income of their own.