Migration theory extends on a continuum of divergent approaches that range from analyses that privilege individual agency to perspectives that give primacy to the structural properties of advanced capitalism. Recent developments seek to synthesize agency and structure, providing analytical space that can enrich the study of labour migration. The application of a structuration model to the specific context of labour migration in southern Africa provides an alternative to counter the simplistic analysis of neoclassical theories and address the limitations of structural theories.;While capitalist development played an overarching role in labour migration, it also converged with the forces of ethnicity, race and gender. This convergence mediated the development of the structures and processes of labour migration. An examination of these forces helps to explain both structural transformation and structural maintenance, by analyzing how the agency of individuals and collectivities was enabled or constrained by the diverse, historical, economic, social, cultural and political contexts within which labour migration took place. An analysis of the various layers of social structure that developed within these diverse contexts provides a deeper understanding of the multiple forms of agency that resulted from the development of the labour migration system.;The conceptualizations of class, race, ethnicity and gender developed along with the labour migration process in southern Africa. These conceptualizations changed over time and contributed to agency that occurred at the surface level of social reproduction but also at the deeper level of societal transformation.
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