Earning an Age: Migration and Maturity in Colonial Kenya, 1895–1952

This article explores the migration of boys and young men from their parents’ homes out onto the coffee, sisal, and tea estates of the settler colony of Kenya. Age and gender figured prominently in their decisions to leave home and work for wages. Young men viewed their physical mobility, financial independence, and distance from elder surveillance as essential to enjoying their youth and rethinking their manliness and coming of age. As they made demands on their elders to acknowledge and ritually authenticate their newfound maturity, they sparked heated debate about and complicated their generational and kinship relations. Age also mattered a great deal to the British colonial state. One of the primary tasks of the state was to ensure the profitability of the settler and multinational firms that produced Kenya’s most important cash crops. With one hand, the state levied its authority, often violently, to draw the young into the wage labor market. With the other, pulled along by social reformers, British officials tried to shield communities from what they believed to be the breakdown of generational, patriarchal authority by legislating underage labor, regulating recruitment, inspecting farms, and fining unscrupulous employers.