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- Convenors:
-
Peter Mollinga
(ZEF Bonn University)
Fraser Sugden (University of Birmingham)
Alan Nicol (IWMI)
- Stream:
- B: Agriculture, natural resources & environment
- Location:
- F6
- Start time:
- 28 June, 2018 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
How does migration impact agricultural and natural resources management in 'home areas? How is (in)equality reproduced through remittances/investment, feminisation of agriculture, agricultural knowledge (loss and gain) and other mechanisms and processes?
Long Abstract:
This panel invites papers that focus on the question of what is happening in rural communities as a result of out-migration, investigating the structural and systemic changes resulting from out-migration and their wider implications for development (in)equalities, including but not limited to changing class relations and the feminisation of agriculture. The panel looks at changes in agricultural and natural resources management dynamics, zooming in on the (re)production of (in)equality. The panel will address how agriculture and natural resource management change as a result of migration, and in what ways, through changes in land, water and other resource rights and access; the impacts of two way flows of (agricultural, market, and other) knowledge; flows of cash and labour between rural areas and migrant communities at destination; and other mechanisms. The panel also investigates how changes in population affect rural out-migration communities, including health and environmental management, attitudes to education, and access to and relationships with formal and informal (state and non-state) institutions. Methodological contributions are invited that address the strong context specificity of the impacts of out-migration in 'home areas', and the implications of that for policy (support and advice). The panel conveners aim to develop a joint publication from the panel's collection of papers.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
When people migrate from communities water equality may change for those left behind. This paper surveys the literature and examines these (in)equalities in terms of ownership, access, and wider impacts of migration including remittances and changes in gendered labour patterns.
Paper long abstract:
Substantial outmigration from rural communities can have impacts on access to and use of water by households. 'Fractured waters' examines these impacts from the perspective of water availability, access and use at both the agriculture and household level. Building on a synthesis review of both migration and rural water supply literatures the paper establishes key interconnections between changing social conditions in 'home communities' as a result of outmigration and the way water supplies are managed for both productive and reproductive uses. Drawing on the work of a range of authors on equality and water access, agricultural transformation and rural development in Asia, Africa and Latin America the paper will argue that resulting changes in water management may have consequences for inequalities with knock-on impacts for health, livelihood security and gender relations. Avoiding an overly-linear view of rural transformation 'Fractured Waters' suggests that the impacts resulting from outmigration can be classified into four general types: 1) stresses caused as a result of changes in labour power availability; 2) changes in power relations over decision making affecting water equality; 3) Additional resource pressures caused by increased demand for resources in the context of changing use patterns (especially in agriculture); and 4) changes in wider environmental (catchment) management affecting the wider resource management context as a result of outmigration.
Paper short abstract:
Based on in-depth interviews with over 300 migrants in Russia and members of their families left in rural areas in Central Asia and employ Mbembe's theory of mecropolitics paper paper theorises how migrants are positioned as superfluous, and how it impact on families.
Paper long abstract:
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has positioned itself as a modernising country (re)built on the profits of its energy boom and the efforts of, currently, over four million labour migrants, the majority from Central Asian rural areas. Far too many migrants endure an extremely precarious everyday as they are forced to live in what this article describes as a citywide state of exception, within which legal frameworks protecting migrants are ignored or misinterpreted to the benefit of the market. Many migrants who desire 'legality' are forced into 'illegality' by their employers and landlords refusing to register their documents correctly, increasing their vulnerability. Such conditions which are followed by unlimited working hours and poor leaving conditions often make impossible to bring children to Russia, and they have to stay with grandparents or with their mother. It creates massive psycological preasure along with disconnections within families. Central Asian woman are often considered by mass-media as medial tourists blaiming them for having babies in Russia. Such abuses are multiplied by the state construction of migrants as diseased and criminal, which in turn becomes embedded into cultural imaginations. Employing Mbembe's theory of necropolitics, this paper theorises how these constructions position migrants as superfluous and that they can be 'let to die', and how it impact on families. Paper is based on research which took place in 2012-2015 and involved in-depth interviews with over 300 migrants working in Russian cities, and interviews with members of families left in Kyrgizstan and Tajikistan.
Paper short abstract:
This paper uses life histories of highly vulnerable households in high-migration areas of Southern Rajasthan, to shed light on their poverty dynamics. It finds that gender inequality is reinforced at several key life moments, particularly in relation to land and asset ownership.
Paper long abstract:
This paper utilises life history interviews of highly vulnerable, high-migration households in Southern Rajasthan to identify their poverty dynamics. The study covers 25 Scheduled Tribe (ST) households, in Udaipur District, Rajasthan. Inequalities are overlapping and multidimensional: across gender, caste, race and ethnicity, region, nationality, age and (dis)ability. While the study points towards the feminisation of agriculture, it also highlights the structural nature of gender inequality: land remains in the legal ownership of men, while men regularly return to their home village to tend to their lands. Gender inequality is reproduced and reinforced in conflicts and disputes over land. Women can experience a descent into poverty upon marriage, and a deepening of poverty and social exclusion, upon the death of their husband.
Migration for work can be poverty-reducing, but ill-health can also make these benefits temporary. A cycle of migration, work and ill-health plays itself out, whereby the male member is eventually unable to work due to illness. For out-migration communities, shocks can further cement vertical inequalities and deepen relationships with informal, non-state institutions: for example as ST families take loans from Rajput moneylenders. Relationships with formal state institutions can prove to be a valuable lifeline, with highly vulnerable households benefitting from subsidised rations through the Public Distribution System, and paid work through MNREGA, particularly for single women.
The insights will be useful to the general community of researchers and practitioners who are interested in the poverty dynamics of the 'most vulnerable' and how they relate to work and migration.
Paper short abstract:
How the demographic composition of migrants' households, including ethnicity, shapes the utilization of remittances in home districts of sampled migrants'. This study uses data from the Ghana Living Standards Survey 6 (2014), involving longitudinal survey of a nationwide sample of 18,000 households.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the impacts of the current forms of internal migration and shifts in labour seeking behavior of youth within the African context using rural Ghana as a case study. This study utilises data from the Ghana Living Standards Survey 6 (GLSS) (2014), involving longitudinal survey of a nationwide sample of 18,000 households. This paper examines the nature and pattern of out-migration from sending areas and how the demographic characteristics and composition of migrants' households, including ethnicity, shapes the application and utilization of remittances in home districts of sampled migrants'. We also examine the inequalities associated with this pattern and how it is impacting on local economies and class structures of sending areas. The results of our analysis indicate a strong relationship between the patterns, practices and utilisation of remittances and the respective norms and social values embedded within the migrants' ethnic identity. The research also shows those ethnic groups with strong internal cohesion and less assimilation remit more than those from more ethnically heterogeneous groups and that migrants from matrilineal societies in this study remit more than those of patrilineal groups. Ethnic values also shape the type of investment that migrants and their families pursue at the home areas. We conclude that migration is spurring the development non-farm diversification activities, with a preference for generating rapid financial returns compared to farming. We recommend the introduction Conditional cash Transfer Programmes as part of an effort to reduce emerging inequalities particularly for the elderly with no access to remittances.
Paper short abstract:
Currently, two strands of migration research are producing seemingly conflicting narratives: one emphasizes the potentiality of migration, while the other one its link with precarity. In this paper, we seek to understand the interrelatedness of this disparate empirical evidence.
Paper long abstract:
Publications addressing the developmental impact of migration and its role for climate change adaptation often highlight migrants' positive potential for resilience, while research on labor migration indicates migrants' precarious working- and living conditions. We argue that this seemingly disparate empirical evidence results from both different foci and socio-spatial scales in analyzing migration and its impacts. To decipher the interlinkages between these two sides of migration and resilience, we propose a translocal approach which addresses multiple socio-spatial scales and the simultaneity of mobility and situatedness of migrants and non-migrants across space. How are the socio-economic conditions in places of origin and destination linked and what do such connections imply for the resilience of migrants and rural households?
To address these questions empirically, we refer to the case of rural-urban migration in Thailand. Our results show the interdependence of translocal connections (e.g. through remittances) and the embeddedness of migrants at the place of destination. Furthermore, comparatively poor conditions of rural households are associated with high burdening of migrants. We conclude that both the type of embeddedness and the exposure to precariousness determine the extent to which migrants' sojourn proves to be a risk or an opportunity for the migrants and their household at home. Migration does thus not in all cases lead to improvements of household conditions at the place of origin. Rather, rural poverty is often reproduced in urban precarity, and migrants working and living under particularly precarious conditions have difficulties supporting their households of origin in a way that can contribute to higher household resilience.
Paper short abstract:
Based the survey from Southern China ,We found the rural migration totally changed the labor division and labour using patterns. Labor saving cropping patterns spreaded quickly and larger scale farm appeared.From appions of rice farmer,migration dosen't lead to the labor shortage in rural sector.
Paper long abstract:
In 2017, the number of migrants had reached 244 million in China. Rural migration reshapes the economic and social structure of China, as well as the agricultural in China.The research based the survey of the 454 rice farmers from Southern China in2015, we collected the data about household demographic information, land, income activities, cropping patterns of rice, remittance and how to use it, and also the framers' cognition for the impact of migration member for the household. We found the direct impact of rural migration for the household is the labour using patterns. Every household have more than one labour migrated to the city, which account for more than 50% of household total labour. The migrants mostly are young member (20-50), male or female, and the left-behinds are older or old female (more than 50) and the children or students. Old people are taking responsibility for caring the children and farming. Farmer is allocating more labor on nonfarm sector, which lead to less labor allocated in the farm sector. Labor saving cropping patterns or technology spread very quickly, such as zero-tillage, direct seeding, machine using or lower intensity cropping and etc. rice cultivators pay more attention to the production efficiency and profit, larger scale or median size family farm become more and more popular. Most farmer household replied that there was no impact of migration members on the left-behinds' agricultural production, but the remittance mostly is used in living cost or house building and the children's education.
Paper short abstract:
Data on migration remains particularly patchy which in turns limits ability of assessing trends of migration. By tracking population changes, the Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems are filling a gap in developing databases which can be used to study migration better in deprived rural areas.
Paper long abstract:
Although rural out-migration is a common phenomenon in Ethiopia and has become a concern of researchers and policymakers, there is much uncertainty regarding the determinants shaping the patterns, levels, and choices of rural migration due to the lack of quantitative knowledge on the topic. To bridge the gap, we examine a source of data, still largely neglected in the analysis of migration: the HDSS (Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems) data.
Established in 2007 in Kersa, district of eastern Hararege, Oromia region, Eastern Ethiopia, the Kersa Demographic Surveillance and Health Research Center (KDS-HRC) is one of the 47 HDSS sites of the INDEPTH network (http://www.indepth-network.org/). It has been carrying out a longitudinal population-based tracking that could be utilised to analyse and unravel the migration patterns and practices of the last 10 years in an active in- an out-migration area. . By tracking population changes through fertility rates, death rates, migration and morbidity, this HDSS provide a critical resource for migration studies and can be investigated to understand the circumstances of migration better over place and time in deprived rural and semi-urban areas. Our research seeks particularly to understand what are the motivations and demographic events pushing people to move out with a particular focus on the behavior of farmers. This given HDSS population of more than 148000 individuals is then considered as a unique draw from a hypothetical universe of all possible similarly deprived situations.