Specialists have emphasised the importance of education for children both as a route out of poverty and for realising their potential. There is a tendency to assume that migration undermines children’s education, as most children’s migration is for work.

However research in Ghana suggests that the links between migration and education are more complex. What are the experiences of young migrants who have moved from rural farming households in northern Ghana to rural and urban households in central and southern Ghana?

There is a long history of migration of Kusasi and other northern ethnic groups who have migrated to the cocoa-growing areas of Ghana. Large numbers of children, particularly girls, move from the north to the south. This is especially so because of the difficulties parents and children face in covering the costs of schooling or vocational training, as well as the poor state of schooling in the north.

There are three main patterns of children’s migration:

1. Relatives living in the urban cocoa-growing regions of the south foster children from rural homes in the north. This can give children access to better schools and training opportunities. However, such opportunities are rare because:

• There is an increasing lack of resources to care for the foster child’s welfare.
• The demand for foster children, usually girls, may increase as a result of the need for help with household labour when the host family's own children enrol in school.

2. Children migrate to do apprenticeships either through being fostered or by earning the income to do so. This reason is much more common because:

• More children are interested in vocational training than formal schooling yet they lack such opportunities in the north.
• They are generally guaranteed food and shelter while training.
• There are more opportunities for children to earn an income, which they can use to carry out further training.

The benefits of apprenticeships, however, are sometimes questionable, since children can work long hours, sometimes with no useful skills training that they may have had to pay for. Yet it is seen as increasingly important for boys and girls to have skills; for girls so that they have means to an independent income and can be seen to do so by prospective husbands and for boys because it is increasingly difficult to rely on farming as a livelihood.

3. Children migrate to earn an income for education.

• Children can migrate to earn an income for their or a family member’s education. However, they often have to work long hours or are at risk of being paid poorly or not paid at all.

Policies on education need to reflect:

• The complex relationship between work, migration, education and training opportunities for children: migration gives some children the opportunities to access education and further their training. However, children can end up in difficult circumstances, which they lack the support and resources to change.
• Context specific evidence: specialists tend to assume a negative connection between children’s migration for work and a failure to continue their education.

Source(s):
'Exploring the Linkages between Children’s Independent Migration and Education: Evidence from Ghana', Working Paper T12, Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty: Brighton, by Iman M. Hashim, August 2005
'Research Report on Children's Independent Migration from Northeastern to Central Ghana', Research Report, Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty: Brighton, by Iman M. Hashim, June 2005

Funded by: The UK Department of for International Development (DFID)

id21 Research Highlight: 3 March 2006

Further Information:
Iman M. Hashim
Development Research Centre on Migration
Globalisation and Poverty
Arts C-226, University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9SJ
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1273 873394
Fax: +44 (0)1273 873158
Contact the contributor: I.M.Hashim@sussex.ac.uk

Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty, UK

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