MIGRATION, AGRARIAN TRANSITION, AND RURAL CHANGE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

Abstract

Intensifying migration flows add new material dimensions to agrarian change in Southeast Asia, with novel forms of livelihood for out-migrants from rural areas, remittance flows for those left behind, and new sources of agricultural labor in places of in-migration. But migration also brings other processes of change that push the analytical boundaries of traditional agrarian political economy. Gender identities are brought into question as men and women move and the masculinities and femininities of migrants and those left behind are reworked. The household is stretched across space and seen more clearly as a contested domain. The spatiality of the village is reworked through long-distance linkages, so that scales of analysis are not quite what they used to be. Issues of ethnic identity are foregrounded as different groups come into contact in the same place. The role of the state (and private recruiters) in regulating migration and in defining and controlling access to citizenship rights requires that new forms of regulation and institutionalism be addressed. In each of these ways, migration provides challenges to understanding rural change. In contextualizing the articles that appear in these two issues of Critical Asian Studies (December 2011 and March 2012), this introduction spells out both the empirical processes of migration and rural change in Southeast Asia and the analytical approaches that are relevant to studying them.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. My own work and the fieldwork of several authors in this collection were supported through a SSHRC major collaborative research initiative known as the Challenges of the Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia (ChATSEA). Many thanks to Professor Rodolphe De Koninck at the Université de Montréal for his intellectual and administrative leadership and to Bruno Thibert for his assistance. Derek Hall, Nancy Peluso, and Jonathan Rigg generously and thoroughly commented on an earlier draft of this paper. Joy Anacta provided very able cartographic assistance. The papers in this collection were first presented at a ChATSEA workshop in Toronto in 2009. Thanks to the Asian Institute at the University of Toronto for hosting the workshop, and especially to Tania Li for her support and hospitality. I am very grateful to the participants in that workshop for their thoughtful comments on the papers presented and to those who later commented on the submitted papers. These commentators were: Keith Barney, Goh Beng Lan, Hew Cheng Sim, Phil Hirsch, Tania Li, Rodolphe De Koninck, Rebecca Elmhirst, Roy Huijsmans, Sai Latt, Adam Lukasiewicz, Wendy Mee, Lynn Milgram, Mary Beth Mills, Doracie Zoleta Nantes, Patrick Oabel, Mike Parnwell, Lesley Potter, Bernadette Resurreccion, Jonathan Rigg, Robin Roth, Rachel Silvey, Stan Tan, Eric Thompson, Tubtim Tubtim, Sarah Turner, and Peter Vandergeest. Finally, thanks to the editors of Critical Asian Studies for agreeing to publish these papers and to Tom Fenton for his support throughout.

Notes

^1. For reviews, see Bernstein 2009; Byres 2009.

^2. Hart et al. 1989; Bernstein and Byres, 2001.

^3. Borras 2009.

^4. Ibid.

^5. See, for example, De Haan and Rogaly 2002.

^6. This collection of articles is divided into two installments: December 2011 (43:4) and March 2012 (44:1). Articles that will appear in March 2012 are cited as forthcoming in the footnotes and references in this issue. See box above.

^7. Byres 1982, 82.

^8. White 1989.

^9. Scott 1976, 1985; Kerkvliet 1990; De Koninck 1992; Pincus 1996; Rigg 2001.

^10. Hart, Turton, and White 1989.

^12. White 1989, 17–18.

^11. Hart 1989.

^13. Massey 2005; Hart 2006.

^14. In the Philippine case, see, for example, Onuki 2009; Tyner 2009.

^15. Gibson-Graham 1996; Butler 1990; McKay 1999.

^16. Kerkvliet 1990.

^17. Borras 2009.

^18. Goss and Linquist 2000.

^19. IOM 2008.

^20. Ibid.

^21. Maclean 2004.

^22. Latt 2011; IOM 2008.

^23. IOM 2008.

^24. Schiff and Ozden 2005.

^25. IOM 2008.

^26. Ibid.

^27. Ibid.

^28. Ibid.

^29. Battistella 2002.

^30. Hall 2011.

^31. Hugo 2002.

^32. CFO 2010.

^33. Kelly 2009.

^34. See, for example, McKay 2003, 2005; Pingol 2001; and Lukasiewicz 2011.

^35. World Bank 2007.

^36. Government of Singapore 2009.

^37. United Nations 2004.

^38. McGee 1991. “Desakota” is a term defined by Canadian geographer T. McGee. It comes from Indonesian (desa means “village” and kota means “city”) and characterizes the original form of large cities in Asia.

^39. UN2007. Note that the 2010 figures are a projection from the most recent census in each country.

^40. Kelly 2000; Payton 2010.

^41. General Statistics Office of Vietnam: www.gso.gov.vn; accessed 1 July 2011.

^42. Anh et al. 2003.

^43. Maclean 2004.

^44. Although, as noted beneath the table, these figures are partly an artifact of definitional issues, since the “municipal” vs. “nonmunicipal” distinction does not fully reflect a rural–urban distinction. Indeed some of what appears to be rural–rural movement may effectively be rural–urban movements as people are moving to nonmunicipal areas adjacent to municipal areas.

^45. See Hew 2011; Mills forthcoming; and Rigg and Salamanca 2011.

^46. Johnston 2007.

^47. Dargay et al. 2007.

^48. Government of Indonesia, Badan Pusat Statistik: dds.bps.go.id; accessed 1 July 2011.

^49. Windle and Cramb 1997; see also Yamauchi et al. 2009 on Indonesia.

^51. Rigg 2007, 163.

^50. Hew 2011.

^52. Kelly 2000.

^53. Latt 2011.

^54. Chin 2009; cited by Hall 2011.

^55. Hall 2011.

^56. See also Li 2002, on Sulawesi.

^57. Silvey and Elmhirst 2003.

^58. Banzon-Bautista 1989.

^59. McKay 2003.

^60. Gibson, Law, and McKay 2001; see also Gibson-Graham 2005.

^61. World Bank 2006.

^62. Lukasiewicz 2011.

^63. Barney forthcoming.

^64. Aguilar 2009.

^65. Resurreccion and Khanh 2007, 218.

^66. ILO 2006.

^67. Lukasiewicz 2011.

^68. Ibid.

^69. Gibson, Law, and McKay 2001. See also White 1989, 21.

^70. Kelly 2000.

^71. De Haan and Rogaly 2002.

^72. Jones and Pardthaisong 1998, 35.

^73. Kelly and Lusis 2006.

^74. Aguilar 1999.

^75. See also Mills 1999, on rural migrants to the city who consume distant regions of the country based on their natural beauty, historic significance or ethnic otherness; Mills forthcoming.

^76. Tubtim forthcoming.

^77. Hew 2011.

^78. Rigg and Salamanca 2011.

^79. Hugo 2005.

^80. Latt 2011; and Hall 2011.

^81. Elmhirst forthcoming.

^82. McGee and Armstrong 1968.

^83. Fauzi 2003.

^84. Gibson and Graham 1986, 133.

Additional information

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Philip F. Kelly

Guest editor