CONNECTING LIVES, LIVING, AND LOCATION

Abstract

This article explores mobility transitions in Thailand through the particular experience of two villages in Northeast Thailand over the period from the early 1980s through to 2009. The authors show through the mobility histories of Ban Non Tae and Ban Tha Song Korn that, while rural settlements may have always had a greater degree of mobility than the sedentary peasant paradigm suggests, important changes have taken place over the last quarter of a century in how that mobility is manifested. Personal mobility has increased; the migration of women has become as prevalent as that of men; and a mixture of daily commuting and more permanent moves have replaced seasonal circulation. In the process, mobility has created complex, multi-sited households; has led to a growing geriatrification of farming; and has altered the basis for livelihood sustainability and village resilience. Case studies of two individuals highlight these dynamics and add color to the themes the authors present. In making clear households' changing spatial signatures, the authors also seek to show how national and international development processes are imprinted in village and household histories.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article draws on research undertaken as part of the “The Challenges of the Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia” project, a major collaborative research initiative of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada coordinated by Rodolphe De Koninck. See catsea1.caac.umontreal.ca/ChATSEA/en/ChAT SEA_Home.html. In the field, we were assisted by Yenchit Thinkam, Wiwat Tananajarunrat, Aphiradee Wongsiri, Chanadda Poohongthong, and Nonglak Sungsuman. We would also like to acknowledge the help of Ajarn Buapun Promphak-ping of Khon Kaen University. Finally and most of all, we are grateful to the villagers of Ban Non Tae and Ban Tha Song Korn; they never fully appreciated that their willingness to talk in 1982 would lead some of them to be re-surveyed over a quarter of a century later. This article was completed while Jonathan Rigg was a Gledden Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Western Australia in Perth, and he would like to acknowledge the support of the Institute of Advanced Studies atUWA, Dr. Brian Shaw, and the School of Earth and Environment.

Notes

^1. For example de Haan 1999 and Gardner and Osella 2003.

^2. See Gill 2003 on Nepal and Deshingkar and Start 2003 on India.

^8. UNDP 2007, 24.

^3. Amyot 1976, 45.

^4. Nartsupha 1996, 69–70, and see Nartsupha 1999.

^5. Jan Breman, in his challenge to the construction of the traditional Asian village, describes the received wisdom as follows: “Briefly, the idea that set the fashion…postulates the existence in the past of a more or less isolated and self-sufficient local system, which was also autonomous from the administrative and political point of view: the timeless Asian village.…” (1982, 191).

^6. Amyot 1976, 141.

^7. Grandstaff et al. 2008, 317–20; and see Parnwell 1986 for a case study of migration in the Northeast's Roiet Province undertaken in 1979–80.

^9. Grandstaff et al. 2008, 321–22.

^10. Baker 2003.

^11. Phongpaichit 1980, 98–99.

^12. Elson 1997, 33.

^13. See, for example, Dixon 1999; Limanonda and Tirasawat 1987; Ouyyanont 1998; Parnwell 1986; Phongpaichit 1982; Phongpaichit and Baker 1995; Phongpaichit and Baker 1998; Rigg 1998; Rigg 2004; Rigg et al. 2004; Rigg and Nattapoolwat 2001.

^14. Graham 1912.

^15. Zimmerman 1931.

^16. Girling 1968.

^17. For analyses of the Northeast “problem,” see Dixon 1977, 1999; Parnwell 1988, 1992, 1996; Parnwell and Rigg 1996.

^18. Fukui 2003; Funahashi 1996; and Shigetomi 2004.

^19. See also Perz 2003; Perz et al. 2006.

^20. Rigg and Salamanca 2009.

^21. Glewwe 2000.

^22. Similar sentiments are present in Knodel and Saengtienchai's study (2007, 199), where one farmer explained: “I asked her to go [to Bangkok], for being here, she had to be hired to work in the hot field exposed to the sun, like me and her dad working so hard. In Bangkok, she wouldn't work outdoors in the sun.”

^23. See Leblond (2008) for a study of the “retreat” of agricultural lands in Phetchabun.

^24. We learned in interviews that even when opportunities for reciprocal labor exchange are available these are sometimes eschewed for fear of failing to meet the expectations of participants. Such laborers today expect to be fed—and fed much better—than in the past, an obligation that some farmers said they were unable to meet.

^25. Prachuabmoh and Mithranon 2003; Sobieszczyk et al. 2003.

^26. Of course, some of these children would have married out of the village. In this instance, however, we are assuming that these out-marry-ers would have been counterbalanced by young men and women marrying into the settlements.

^27. Sen 1990; Sen 2003.

^28. Bongaarts 2001.

^29. Prachuabmoh and Mithranon 2003.

^30. National Statistical Office 2004.

^31. Bongaarts 2001.

^32. See also Eder 1999.

^33. Funahashi 1996.

^34. The situation revealed in table 4 is at odds in terms of degree, if not in terms of direction, from that reported in national studies based on census returns. The last three censuses (1980, 1990, and 2000) reveal a decline in the nuclear family from 70.6 percent to 60.3 percent, while the proportion of extended families has increased slightly from 25.2 percent to 29.6 percent. Household composition at a national level, at least according to the census data, has remained roughly the same even though the Kingdom has seen a reduction in family size from 5.2 in 1980 to around 3.9 in 2000 (Prachuabmoh and Mithranon 2003).

^35. Knodel and Saengtienchai (2007) use the concept of “modified extended family” to describe the same situation.

^36. In part this is because the road infrastructure has improved since 1982–83, but even then the highway network was well developed—a product of the security concerns of the 1960s and 1970s. But more important has been a revolution in public and personal transportation facilities.

^37. Bangkok Post 2010.

^38. See also Knodel and Saengtienchai 2007.