Home Call: Absence, Presence and Migration in Rural Northern Ghana

Migratory movements within Ghana date back to a period long before colonisation and seasonal migration is part and parcel of daily life in the rural areas. Today however, migration has become more permanent and more feminine. In this paper, the consequences of migration are looked at from the perspective of those who stay behind in rural northeastern Ghana. In a first part, some of the triggers and dynamics at play in national rural-urban migration are described and compared with the movements of the young bride. Secondly, I discuss in more detail the different consequences for wives, mothers and grandmothers who stay behind in the family house. Finally, it is death that brings the migrants home. The funerary rituals renew and replenish ties of belonging and webs of kinship, even if only temporarily.status: publishe