International Labor Migration from a Tropical Development Frontier: Globalizing Households and an Incipient Forest Transition

Abstract

This study documents labor migration and its impacts on household income, material well-being, and land-use practices in Mexico's southern Yucatán and examines the relation of labor migration to local forest recovery. Drawing on a 203-household survey in 14 communities, we contrast migrating and non-migrating households, showing that migration earnings substitute for agricultural earnings and that migrating households cultivate significantly less farmland. A larger percentage of migrating households maintain pasture, but, on average, not more hectares. These dynamics are consistent with the decline in deforestation registered in the area for the year 2000. Incipient local forest recovery is considered in light of current forest transition theory, with an examination of three hypothesized paths to forest recovery: economic development, forest scarcity, and smallholder agricultural adjustment. The southern Yucatán case illustrates the need to explicitly incorporate the role of globalizing household economies into forest transition theory.

Toward the Integrated Framework Analysis of Linkages among Agrobiodiversity, Livelihood Diversification, Ecological Systems, and Sustainability amid Global Change

“…Gender dynamics are critical to these trends, since in many cases women become the main farm managers, and this "feminization" of resource use exerts a major influence on the specifics of agricultural change (e.g., crop choice) and general outcomes (e.g., intensification or disintensification) [14,48,51,89,90,97,[172][173][174][175][176][177][196][197][198]. For example, the decline of chili pepper markets led to disintensification in the southern Yucatán region of Mexico through processes of livelihood diversification based on international migration and the influence of women's role in subsequent resource use [173,196,197]. In other cases, where women have migrated significantly, such as the case of remote-rural regions of Spain and elsewhere in Europe, including the former German Democratic Republic [99,198], new arrangements combine the "masculinization" of continued land use with social innovations in women's continued albeit reduced involvement.…”

Linking Remote Sensing, Census and Interview Data to Understand Forest Transitions in the Southern Cone of the State of Yucatán, México

“…Oxkutzcab was the only place that was experiencing any in-migration, but none of it was related to agriculture. Out-migration was also linked to a reduction in area under cultivation in the Calakmul region (Busch & Geoghegan 2010, Radel, et al 2010, Schmook & Radel 2008. The 2000 census data showed that the service sector is the most important source of employment in Oxkutzcab whereas agriculture continued to provide the main source of livelihood for people in Peto and especially Tzucacab.…”

“…For example based on survey data from 1986-1997, Programa de Apoyos Directos al Campo (PRO-CAMPO), an agricultural program implemented in 1994 with the goal of integrating agricultural markets and intensifying production, revealed only modest increases in market production, but an increase in deforestation occurred through the conversion of land to commercial chili production and pastures (Klepeis & Vance 2003). A study based on household surveys carried out in 1997 and 2003 found that similar land use choices were being made by some, although others were choosing to withdraw from agriculture all together and those who converted their land to pasture or commercial agriculture were using less land than previously devoted to extensive agricultural practices, resulting in a decrease in deforestation (Busch & Geoghegan 2010, Radel et al 2010, Schmook & Radel 2008. The increase in global environmentalism over the last 25 years has also led to the development of community-based conservation programs in the region, such as the Parks in Peril program and Empleo Temporal, which along with the enforcement of rules associated with the reserve seem to be contributing to a decline in deforestation (Rueda 2010).…”

“…An important contributor to the decline in deforestation is a reduction in family labor due to out-migration and the resulting decrease of land in production (Busch & Geoghegan 2010, Radel, et al 2010, Schmook & Radel 2008. The relationship that people have with the land and their land use choices also depends on their length of residence in the area, with long-time residents typically practicing diversified subsistence strategies that have less of an adverse environmental impact than the commercial agriculture typically practiced by immigrants from central and northern México who moved to the region during the agrarian reform of 1994 (Chowdhury 2010, Gurri 2010 (Bray et al 2004).…”

‘Con nuestro propio esfuerzo’: Understanding the Relationships between International Migration and the Environment in Guatemala

“…This hypothesis ignores the possibility that labour could be substituted by household members, sharecroppers, hired workers, or mechanization (Hein 2006), or by turning to less labour-intensive, but more land-intensive agricultural activities, e.g. cattle ranching (Schmook and Radel 2008). The empirical literature shows that migration can result in deforestation or reforestation in the areas of origin of migrants, depending on the investments made by households, markets, policies, and institutions (Conway and Lorah 1995;Hecht et al 2006;Holder and Chase 2011;Kull et al 2007;Moran-Taylor and Taylor 2010;Naylor et al 2002;Taylor et al 2006).…”