WHERE THE STREETS ARE PAVED WITH PRAWNS

Abstract

As the proportion of the gross domestic product of Southeast Asian countries accounted for by agriculture continues its long-term decline, it is natural in studying regional migration flows to emphasize the ways people are moving away from farming. Across the region, however, millions of people continue to migrate both within and across international borders to take part in agricultural production. Many of them are moving to grow “boom crops” like cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, and shrimp, all of which have seen rapid expansion over the last two decades. In this article, the author provides a comparative survey of the links between crop booms and migration in Southeast Asia, arguing that this migration has taken three main forms: relatively autonomous and “spontaneous” migration by households or individuals looking to set up as boom crop–growing smallholders; a “transmigration” model in which parastatal agencies or private corporations with state support help migrants to relocate so that they can take part in organized farming schemes with at least some smallholder component; and migration for the purpose of working as waged laborers for plantations or richer smallholders growing boom crops. The importance of these types of migration has varied across crops. In the conclusion, the author makes several points about the politics of migration and crop booms.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

An earlier version of this article was presented to the ChATSEA Workshop on Migration and Rural Change in Southeast Asia at the University of Toronto on 30 April and 1 May 2009. I am grateful to the workshop participants (especially Keith Barney and Stan Tan) and to Rodolphe De Koninck, Philip Kelly, and Lesley Potter for their comments. All errors are my own.

Notes

^1. Rigg 2006.

^2. McKay 2003.

^3. Figures downloaded from Faostat, 11 November 2007. See also De Koninck 2003; Hall 2009, 604.

^4. Rigg 2007.

^5. For more on this definition and on the relationship between “crop booms” and “boom crops,” see Hall et al. 2011, 87–89.

^6. On frontiers in contemporary Southeast Asia, see De Koninck 2006; Barney 2009; Hirsch 2009; Potter 2006; and Wenk Forthcoming.

^7. On coffee, see Tan 2000, 52; Greenfield 2002; on oil palm, see Cooke 2006, 9; on shrimp, see Anonymous 1996.

^8. On shrimp, see Tokrisna 2004, 158 for Thailand, and personal communication, Reiko Omoto, October 2009, for Vietnam; on coffee in Vietnam, see Winkels 2008; Trung 2003, 79.

^9. Though see inter alia Feintrenie et al. 2010; Hall 2003; Hall 2004; Hall 2011; Hall et al. 2011.

^10. Li 2010 (Agrarian), 13.

^11. Jitjan et al. 2009, 445.

^12. See Ha and Shively 2008; Potter 2006, 176.

^13. Neilson 2007, 227.

^14. Potter 2008, 176.

^15. Gaveau et al. 2009, 598.

^16. Ruf and Yoddang 2001 (Cocoa), 104.

^17. Ibid., 97.

^18. Li 2002.

^19. See inter alia De Koninck 2006; Hall et al. 2011, 105–111; Tan 2000; Trung 2003.

^20. De Koninck 2006, 50.

^21. D'haeze et al. 2005, 60.

^22. On this point see also Hall 2011.

^23. Tan 2000, 52. See also Ruf and Yoddang 2001, 106, 132, on the same dynamic for cocoa. On migrant coffee production on forest-zoned land that the State Forest Enterprises ostensibly held but were in practice not able to control, see Asian Development Bank and ActionAid Vietnam 2003, 53.

^24. For a broad discussion of informal land sales to migrants in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, with specific focus on oil palm development in Papua New Guinea, see Koczberski et al. 2009.

^25. Tran 2006, 220.

^26. Ruf and Yoddang 2001 (Cocoa), 132; Ruf et al. 2001, 183.

^27. Tan 2000, 52; Trung 2003, 77.

^28. Ruf et al. 2001, 184; Li 2002, 428–9.

^29. Trung 2003, 93.

^30. Potter 2001, 316.

^31. Fougères 2008, chapters 6 and 7.

^32. Ruf and Yoddang 2001 (Migration), 206.

^33. Jitjan et al. 2009.

^34. Winkels 2008, 36.

^35. Fougères 2008, 205–6.

^36. Ruf and Yoddang 2001 (Cocoa), 103, 146.

^37. Elmhirst 1999, 814.

^38. Sutton 2001; Colchester et al. 2006, 44–6; McCarthy and Cramb 2009; Potter 2011.

^39. For examples of the fourth, see Colchester et al. 2006, 73–93 and 110-124; Dennis and Colfer 2006, 41.

^40. De Koninck et al. 2011, 30.

^41. Sutton 2001, 92.

^42. In Sarawak, some attempts were made by the Sarawak Land Development Board to apply a Felda-type approach to resettlement for oil palm production in the 1970s and 1980s, but little came of these. McCarthy and Cramb 2009, 118.

^43. McCarthy and Cramb 2009, 116. See also Elmhirst 2001, 288; Potter 2006, 183.

^44. See, respectively, McCarthy and Cramb 2009 and Potter 2011.

^45. Lucien-Brun 1997, 25; Hall 2004, 321, 328.

^46. Rosenberry 1996; Lucien-Brun 1997, 68; Takenobu and Sidik 1999.

^47. Ruf and Yoddang 2001 (Migration), 205.

^48. Potter 2011, 179.

^49. Li 2011, 288.

^50. Elmhirst 2001, 300.

^51. Page references in this paragraph are to Ruf et al. 2001.

^52. Elmhirst 1999, 821; Li 2007, 81.

^53. Bernard and Bissonnette 2011.

^54. Miyamoto 2006, 8.

^57. Li 2011, 288.

^55. Li 2010 (Indonesia's), Li 2011.

^56. Li 2010 (Indonesia's).

^58. For the former, see Ruf and Yoddang 2001 (Migration), 219; Resurreccion and Sajor 2010, 113. For the latter, see Li 2010 (Agrarian), 15, 22.

^59. Ruf and Yoddang 2001 (Migration), 211.

^60. Martin 2007.

^61. The Solidarity Center 2008; Hosinski 2009. The 2008 report was controversial; for industry responses, see www.shrimpnews.com/TrueCostOfShrimp.html (accessed 4 November 2009).

^62. Resurreccion and Sajor 2010, 109.

^63. Ibid., 113–14.

^64. Ibid., 120–22, 125–26.

^65. Chin 2009, 286.

^66. Ibid., 287.

^67. Cited in Fold 2000; see also Sutton 2001.

^68. Cramb 2007, 267 (Sarawak); Cooke 2009, 46 (Sabah).

^69. Migration News 1994.

^70. Maulia 2008.

^71. Cooke 2009, 47.

^72. Netto 2005.

^73. Potter 2009, 92.

^74. Migration News 1994; Migration News 1998; MY Palm Oil 2009.

^75. Chin 2009, 288.

^76. Cooke 2009.

^77. Maulia 2008.

^78. See Zhang et al. 2006.

^79. On Konsep Baru, see Ngidang 2002; Cramb 2007, 270–71; on Indonesian labor on these schemes, see McCarthy and Cramb 2009: 119.

^80. Colchester et al. 2006, 102–3.

^81. Hall 2011.

^82. Hayami 2001, 182.

^83. Hall 2003.

^84. Cramb 2007.

^85. See Hall 2011.

^86. The World Bank 2007. On this point see also Hall 2009, 605.

^87. Crook 2001. See also Barbier and Burgess 2001.

^88. Cramb 2007, 365. The “Highland” reference is to Scotland, not Vietnam.

^89. Ruf et al. 2001, 184–85.

^90. Hall et al. 2011, chap. 4.

^91. De Koninck 1996.

^92. Elson 1997, 124; Li 2010 (Indigeneity).

^93. See Flaherty and Vandergeest 1998.

^94. Ruf and Yoddang 2001 (Migration), 213; Li 2007; Potter 2008.