Property rights for social inclusion: Migrant strategies for securing land and livelihoods in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

This paper examines the broad range of informal land transactions and arrangements migrants are entering into with customary landowners to gain access to customary land for export cash cropping in the oil palm belt of West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Whilst these arrangements can provide migrants with relatively secure access to land, there are instances of migrants losing their land rights. Typically, the land tenure arrangements of migrants with more secure access to land are within a framework of property rights for social inclusion whereby customary landowners' inalienable rights to land are preserved and the 'outsider' becomes an 'insider' with ongoing use rights to the land. Through socially embedding land transactions in place-based practices of nonmarket exchange, identities of difference are eroded as migrants assume identities as part of their host groups. This adaptability of customary land tenure and its capacity to accommodate large migration in-flows and expanding commodity production undermines the argument common amongst proponents of land reform that customary tenure is static and inflexible. Before such claims are heeded, there must be more detailed empirical investigations of the diverse range of land tenure regimes operating in areas of the country experiencing high rates of immigration.Relationship between people is commercial, where obligations and commitments are thin. Short-term relationship between people. Concept of absolute unitary ownership.Property law for stranger relations. FREEHOLD PRINCIPLES Relationships between relatives where kin networks bind people together in a web of mutual obligations and commitments. Long-term relationships between relatives. Concept of relational property and land as an inalienable resource Property law for kin relations CUSTOMARY PRINCIPLES Figure 2. Cooter's concept of property law in PNG G. Koczberski et al.

A bridge too far? The influence of socio-cultural values on the adaptation responses of smallholders to a devastating pest outbreak in cocoa

“…Land tenure arrangements, investment decisions and incentives to produce agricultural commodities are shaped by a host of considerations in addition to market imperatives like profit (e.g. Carrier and Carrier, 1989;Banks, 1999;Curry, 1999Curry, , 2003Goddard, 2000;Imbun, 2000;Horan, 2002;Van der Grijp, 2004;Sahlins, 2005;McGregor, 2007;Minnegal and Dwyer, 2007;Cahn, 2008;Koczberski et al, 2009;Maclean, 2010;Thornton et al, 2010;Bainton, 2011;Curry and Koczberski, 2013;Curry et al, 2012a;Boyd, 2013;McCormack and Barclay, 2013;Mosko, 2013).…”

Informal Land Markets in Papua New Guinea

“…Customary land tenure arrangements vary across the country, but generally, under customary tenure, rights to land are based on a mixture of descent, residence and participation in communal activities (Cooter 1991;Larmour 1991;Curry 1997;Koczberski et al 2009). Exclusive individual landownership and inheritance was limited because, in the largely horticultural societies of PNG, an individual's rights to land for the cultivation of food crops waned as the garden reverted to fallow.…”

“…There is a trend in areas where perennial cash crops have been incorporated into village farming systems for customary tenure to gradually become more individualised and for land to be 'sold' to other clan members (Epstein 1969;Standish 1984;Foster 1995;MacWilliam 1988;Curry et al 2007;Martin 2007;Koczberski et al 2009). …”

Powers of Exclusion in Melanesia

“…Furthermore, most of them do not have customary rights to the land from which their livelihoods are derived. This group includes the so-called block-holders who cultivate oil palm on allotments of state land in state-sponsored resettlement schemes in PNG and sell their crops to the operators of a nearby nucleus estate, but it also includes migrants who have made arrangements with customary landowners to access some of their land for the same purpose (Ploeg 1999;Koczberski et al 2009). …”