Jon Sward

This working paper uses a multi-level approach to investigate the recent trend of semipermanent migration of tenant farmers from Northern Ghana to Brong Ahafo’s transition zone. Significant numbers of migrants have moved to this ‘agricultural frontier’ since the 1970s, for the purpose of accessing farmland through rental or sharecropping arrangements in order to engage in smallholder commercial agriculture of food crops such as maize, yam and cassava. Using both qualitative data collected at three migrant ‘settler’ communities in Brong Ahafo in 2014 as well as census data, the paper seeks to explore the relationship between migration and shifting conditions at migrant destinations, including evolving local customary tenure norms, changing land use patterns, and the emergence of trans-local migrant social networks. The paper’s key findings include that migration from Northern Ghana to Brong Ahafo’s transition zone reflects discrete mobility corridors, rooted in trans-local kin networks, which have resulted in the movement of migrants from particular northern origin areas to particular destinations. Echoing van der Geest (2011a), the paper suggests that this migration is perceived by migrants themselves to be a
migration to ‘greener pastures’, owing to the fact that the transition zone offers access to better agro-ecological conditions than they have access to in Northern Ghana. However, the paper’s qualitative research findings suggest a substantial divergence in migrant livelihood outcomes amongst Northern Ghanaian migrants in Brong Ahafo, showing that there are limits of migration to ‘agricultural frontiers’ in terms of poverty reduction, for
both migrants and their northern kin.

Migration is at the centre of demographic research on the population–environment nexus. Increasing concerns about the impacts of environmental events on human population are fuelling interest on the relationship between migration and environmental change. Using data from the Climate Change Collective Learning and Observatory Network Ghana project, we employ binary logistic regression to examine migration intentions of households in response to major community stressors including climate-related ones. The results indicate that the type of community stressor that affects households most does not differentiate migration intentions in Ghana’s forest-savannah transition zone: Even though the majority of the respondents mentioned climate-related events as the stressor that affects them the most, such events do not appear to directly explain migration intentions. However, socio-demographic factors such as age, household size and current migration status are significant predictors of migration intentions, with younger household heads, heads of migrant households and heads of smaller households being relatively more likely to have migration intentions than other household heads. We conclude that migration drivers are multifaceted and deserve further research because even in areas with perceived environmental stress, climate-related events may not be the primary motivation for migration intentions.