Rural homes and urban dwellings? Gender, migration and the importance of tenure in Gaborone, Botswana

Abstract

Abstract Migration studies in the Third World have largely regarded the movements of women as being identical to those of men. Recent work has shown that not only are women migrating in increasing numbers but that their movement also varies from that of men in terms of motives and length of stay in the destination area. Moreover, there is a great deal of geographical variability in female migration patterns so that women are encouraged to migrate in some countries while the movements of others are restricted. The issue of return migration has been widely debated in African migration literature in view of strong rural‐urban ties and urban growth based largely on in‐migration. On the basis of fieldwork in Botswana, it is argued that there are important gender differences in terms of the commitment to rural and urban areas. It has been postulated in past studies that the decision to remain in towns depends in part upon urban tenure and it is argued that home owners are more likely than tenants to be permanent urban dwellers. Again, there are important gender differences and women appear to be more committed to the urban dwelling than men.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 16 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.