Migration, Remittances and Development in Lesotho

GENDER AND REMITTANCES

MIGRATION POLICY SERIES NO. 52 51 kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk six people.85 The de facto household head is a young male of 22, a university student. He looks after his younger brother (aged 18) and two younger sisters (aged 13 and 4). His two older sisters are both migrants to South Africa. One (aged 25) has been working in a shop in South Africa for 5 years. The other (aged 24) has just gone to South Africa for the first time. This household has four members in school yet receives no remittances at all directly from the two female migrant members in South Africa. Yet it still spent R4,000 on food, R1,700 on school fees and R1,500 on clothes over the previous year. The key is their widowed father. After their mother died, he moved in with a woman in another household. The two sisters send their remittances to their father “who decides how the money should be used.” The father splits the money between his new household and that of his children. Table 27: Proportion of Households Receiving Remitted Goods Type of Goods % Clothing 28.6 Food 7.6 Consumption Goods 2.5 Fuel 0.7 Equipment 0.5 Seed 0.2 Poultry 0.2 Goods for Funeral 0.2 Goods for Feast 0.2 Roofing 0.1 GENDER AND REMITTANCES Four basic types of migrant-sending and remittance-receiving households were identified by MARS (Table 28): • Female-headed: No husband/male partner; may include relatives, children, friends; • Male-headed: No wife/female partner; may include relatives, children , friends; • Nuclear: Man and woman with or without children; usually malehead ; • Extended: Man and woman and children and other relatives and non-relatives; male-head The vast majority of male Basotho migrants (nearly 90%) come from nuclear and extended family households. Only 55% of female migrants come from such households. A significant minority (43%) come from MIGRATION, REMITTANCES AND ‘DEVELOPMENT’ IN LESOTHO 52 kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk female-headed households in which there is no husband or male partner (Table 28). Table 28: Migrant-Sending Household Typology Male Migrants Female Migrants Female-headed 7.0 42.9 Male-headed 3.8 0.7 Nuclear 43.3 18.6 Extended 45.9 37.8 Total 100 100 Source: SAMP Household Survey Most striking is the great significance of migrant remittances to household subsistence and basic material needs, regardless of migrant gender. The general importance of remittances is evident in the straightforward proportion of migrant-sending households that receive money from their migrant members (Table 29). At close to 90% in Lesotho, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, this is an extremely high figure in international comparative terms. Male migrants from Lesotho are slightly more likely to remit than female migrants. Given that male migrant labour is mainly in the mining sector, where remittances are compulsory, and that female migrant labour is in more precarious sectors of the South African labour market, it is surprising that this observed gender discrepancy in remittance behaviour is not higher. Table 29: Proportion of Households Receiving Remittances Country Male Migrant-Sending Households (%) Female Migrant-Sending Households (%) Lesotho 94.9 89.3 Mozambique 79.6 58.8 Swaziland 88.8 92.9 Zimbabwe 89.5 90.1 Source: SAMP Household Survey The amounts of money remitted by female migrants overall are significantly lower than those of male migrants (Table 30). Women’s employment and livelihood strategies – for example as informal sector traders or domestic workers compared to waged mine labour – mean lower earnings overall and less regular or reliable remuneration. In addition , female migrants who are daughters, rather than spouses or heads of household, may remit a lower proportion of their earnings compared to male migrants, who are more likely to be heads of household and primary breadwinners. MIGRATION POLICY SERIES NO. 52 53 kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk Table 30: Average Annual Remittances Received from Male and Female Migrants Male Migrants Female Migrants Mean M11,162.46 M4,825.32 Median M9,600.00 M3,600.00 Source: SAMP Household Survey While the gender differences in the monetary value of remittances are stark, Lesotho’s female migrants remit significantly higher sums than their counterparts in Swaziland, Mozambique or Zimbabwe. This could be because the need for remittance income is greater in Lesotho, with fewer alternative livelihood options available and migrant-sending households being more directly dependent on migrant remittances. This is especially true for the female-headed households that make up a high proportion...