Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Out-migration and land-use change in agricultural frontiers: insights from Altamira settlement project

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Population and Environment Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

One of Daniel Hogan’s lasting impacts on international demography community comes through his advocacy for studying bidirectional relationships between environment and demography, particularly migration. We build on his holistic approach to mobility and examine dynamic changes in land use and migration among small farm families in Altamira, Pará, Brazil. We find that prior area in either pasture or perennials promotes out-migration of adult children, but that out-migration is not directly associated with land-use change. In contrast to early formulations of household life cycle models that argued that aging parents would decrease productive land use as children left the farm, we find no effect of out-migration of adult children on land-use change. Instead, remittances facilitate increases in area in perennials, a slower to pay off investment that requires scarce capital, but in pasture. While remittances are rare, they appear to permit sound investments in the rural milieu and thus to slow rural exodus and the potential consolidation of land into large holdings. We would do well to promote the conditions that allow them to be sent and to be used productively to keep families on the land to avoid the specter of extensive deforestation for pasture followed by land consolidation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The first phase of migration into the Amazon was primarily motivated by government policies aimed at preserving Amazonian sovereignty and reducing pressure for agrarian reform. Some studies suggested that the likelihood of a small farmer succeeding in the Amazon was much higher than in other parts of the country (FAO/UNDP/MARA 1992). The second phase of migration, rural–rural and rural–urban migration flows within the Amazon, added to the fast-growing local urban centers and reflected small-scale farmers diversifying their portfolio of capitals over space. This spatial diversification of capitals resulted in a growing number of multi-sited households in the region (Padoch et al. 2008).

  2. Data from the Brazilian Demographic Census, for instance, reveal that inter-regional rural–rural migration (from elsewhere to the North Region) gave way to rural–urban, as well as urban–urban intra-regional migratory streams from the 1990s on (Hogan et al. 2008).

  3. A strong test requires an analysis of the migration behavior of each individual adult child, examining the coordination or competition between them in both migration behaviors and remittances. Such analyses would distract from our primary focus on the bidirectional relationship between land use and migration. A strong test further requires detailed information about the income of migrants in their destinations, which is not present in our data.

  4. We allowed the respondents to use their own definitions of urban and rural, but in cases where they asked, we used the definition of urban and rural used by IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics). This defines the urban population as households or persons living in the areas corresponding to the municipality seats (urbanized or not) or villages (district seats). The rural population corresponds to the rest of population living in the other areas within the municipality political and administrative boundaries (IBGE 2010).

  5. For those producing (only for sale), but with no information about the amount, we assigned them the same production as a randomly selected other respondent (selected from among others who produced that same product). For those with missing information about the price of products sold (including those for whom we imputed production values and those only missing information on prices), we assigned them the same price received by a randomly selected other respondent (selected from others who sold the same crop).

  6. We lose 10 households from this sample of 277 because there was no information about property size and land use for 4 cases, 3 households had no children (and thus were not at risk of the out-migration of coresident children), and 3 had missing information about financial transfers from children.

  7. We use SUR models to account for correlation among residuals of land use equations. This is the case when land use classes are measured within the same unit (property). Therefore, change in one land use will be correlated with change in the other land use classes (Guedes 2010).

  8. We used a Heckman selection model (results available upon request) to test whether there was a significant correlation between land use in 2005 and selection into property size change. The Wald test of independence between outcome (land use/cover classes) and selection (change in property size) equations was not significant for the outcomes used.

  9. The command for seemingly unrelated regression equations in Stata MP 11.0 (StataCorp 2009) does not allow for bootstrap standard errors, but it allows the use of an alternate divisor in computing the covariance matrix for the equation residuals, adjusted for small samples. When this option is chosen, a small-sample adjustment is made and the divisor is taken to be \( \sqrt {\left( {n - k_{i} } \right)\left( {n - k_{j} } \right)} \), where k i and k j are the numbers of parameters in equations i and j, respectively (StataCorp 2009).

  10. In addition, there is evidence in our study area that the net financial transfers tend to be zero, followed by transfers from the household to the non-coresident children (Guedes et al. 2009b).

  11. Estimated values hold the other variables from the Tobit model constant at their mean value.

References

  • Adams, R. (2006). International remittances and the household: Analysis and review of global evidence. Journal of African Economics, 15, 396–425.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barbieri, A. F., & Carr, D. L. (2005). Gender-specific out-migration, deforestation and urbanization in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Global and Planetary Change, 47(2–4), 99–110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barbieri, A. F., Carr, D. L., & Bilsborrow, R. E. (2009). Migration within the frontier: The second generation colonization in the ecuadorian Amazon. Population Research and Policy Review, 28(3), 291–320.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Browder, J. O. (2002). The urban-rural interface: Urbanization and tropical forest cover change. Urban Ecosystems, 6(1–2), 21–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Browder, J. O., & Godfrey, B. J. (1997). Rainforest cities: Urbanization, development, and globalization of the Brazilian Amazon. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caldas, M., Walker, R., Arima, E., Perz, S., Aldrich, S., & Simmons, C. (2007). Theorizing land cover and land use change: The peasant economy of Amazonian deforestation. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97(1), 86–110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • D’Antona, A. O., VanWey, L. K., & Hayashi, C. M. (2006). Property size and land cover change in the Brazilian Amazon. Population and Environment, 27(5–6), 373–396.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davis, J., & Lopez-Carr, D. (2010). The effects of migrant remittances on population–environment dynamics in migrant origin areas: International migration, fertility, and consumption in highland Guatemala. Population & Environment, Original Paper. doi:10.1007/s11111-010-0128-7.

  • De Brauw, A., & Rozelle, S. (2008). Migration and household investment in rural China. China Economic Review, 19(2), 320–335.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, F. (1998). Household strategies and rural livelihood diversification. Journal of Development Studies, 35(1), 1–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • FAO/UNDP/MARA. (1992). Principais indicadores sócio-econômicos dos assentamentos de reforma agrária. Brasília: FAO/PNUD/MARA. Projeto BRA-87/022.

  • Feliciano, C. (2005). Educational selectivity in U.S. immigration: How do immigrants compare to those left behind? Demography, 42(1), 131–152.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gonçalves, S., & White, H. (2005). Bootstrap standard error estimates for linear regression. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 100(471), 970–979. doi:10.1198/016214504000002087.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gray, C. (2009). Rural out-migration and stallholder agriculture in the southern Ecuadorian Andes. Journal of Population & Environment, 30, 193–197.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guedes, G. R. (2010). Ciclo de Vida Domiciliar, Ciclo do Lote e Dinâmica do Uso da Terra na Amazônia Rural Brasileira—Um estudo de caso para Altamira, Para. Ph.D. Disseration, Demography Department, CEDEPLAR/Federal University of Minas Gerais, 223 pp.

  • Guedes, G. R., Costa, S., & Brondízio, E. S. (2009a). Revisiting the hierarchy of urban areas in the Brazilian Amazon: A multilevel approach. Population and Environment, 30(4–5), 159–192.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guedes, G. R., Queiroz, B. L., & VanWey, L. K. (2009b). Transferências intergeracionais privadas na Amazônia rural Brasileira. Nova Economia, 19(2), 325–357.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guedes, G. R., Resende, A. C., Brondizio, E. S., D′Antona, A. O., Penna-Firme, R. P., & Cavallini, I. (2009c). Poverty dynamics and income inequality in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. In: XXVI IUSSP international population conference, Marrakesh, Morocco.

  • Harris, J. R., & Todaro, M. P. (1970). Migration, unemployment and development: A two-sector analysis. The American Economic Review, 60(1), 126–142.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hogan, D. J. (1992). The impact of population growth on the physical environment. European Journal of Population, 8(2), 109–123.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hogan, D. J. (1995). Population and environment in Brazil: A changing Agenda. In J. I. Clarke & L. Tabah (Eds.), Population, environment, development interactions (pp. 245–252). Paris: Cicred-Paris.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hogan, D. J. (1998). Mobilidade populacional e Meio Ambiente. Revista Brasileira de Estudos de População, 15(2), 83–92.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hogan, D. J. (2001). Population mobility and environment. In D. J. Hogan (Ed.), Population change in Brazil: Contemporary perspectives (Vol. 1, pp. 213–223). Campinas, SP: MPC Artes Gráficas em Papel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hogan, D. J. (2005). Mobilidade populacional, sustentabilidade ambiental e vulnerabilidade social. Revista Brasileira de Estudos de População, 22(2), 323–338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hogan, D. J., Cunha, J. M. P., & Carmo, R. L. (2001). Land use and land cover change in Brazil’s Center-West: Demographic, social and environmental consequences. In: Hogan, D. J. (Ed.). Population change in Brazil: Contemporary perspectives. Campinas: Population Studies Center (Nepo/Unicamp) pp. 309–332.

  • Hogan, D. J., D’Antona, A. O., & Carmo, R. L. (2008). Dinâmica demográfica recente da Amazônia. In M. Batistella, E. F. Moran, & D. A. Alves (Eds.), Amazônia: Natureza e Sociedade em Transição (pp. 71–116). São Paulo: Edusp.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hogan, D. J., & Marandola, E., Jr. (2005). Towards an interdisciplinary conceptualisation of vulnerability. Population, Space and Place, 11, 455–471.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics). (2010). Banco Multidimensional de estatística. Available at: http://www.bme.ibge.gov.br.

  • Jokisch, B. D. (2002). Migration and agricultural change: The case of smallholder agriculture in highland Ecuador. Journal of Human Ecology, 30(4), 523–550.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lee, E. S. (1966). A theory of migration. Demography, 3(1), 47–57.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marandola, E., Jr., & Hogan, D. J. (2007). Em direção a uma demografia ambiental? Avaliação e tendências dos estudos de população e ambiente no Brasil. Revista Brasileira de Estudos da População, 24(2), 1–25.

    Google Scholar 

  • Massey, D. S., Arango, J., Hugo, G., Kouaouci, A., Pellegrino, A., & Taylor, J. E. (1993). Theories of international migration: A review and appraisal. Population and Development Review, 19(3), 431–466.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Massey, D. S., Axinn, W. G., & Ghimire, D. J. (2010). Environmental change and out-migration: evidence from Nepal. Population & Environment, Original Paper. doi:10.1007/s11111-010-0119-8.

  • Mazzucato, V. (2009). Informal insurance arrangements in Ghanaian migrants’ transnational networks: The role of reverse remittances and geographic proximity. World Development, 37(6), 1105–1115.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCracken, S. D., Brondizio, E. S., Nelson, D., Moran, E. F., Siqueira, A. D., & Rodriguez-Pedraza, C. (1999). Remote sensing and GIS at farm property level: Demography and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, 65(11), 1311–1320.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCracken, S., Siqueira, A. D., Moran, E. F., & Brondízio, E. S. (2002). Land use patterns on an agricultural frontier in Brazil: Insights and examples from a demographic perspective. In C. H. Wood & R. Porro (Eds.), Deforestation and land use in the Amazon (pp. 162–192). Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mendola, M. (2008). Migration and technological change in rural households: Complements or substitutes? Journal of Development Economics, 85(1–2), 150–175.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moran, E. F. (1981). Developing the Amazon. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moran-Taylor, M. J., & Taylor, M. J. (2010). Land and leña: Linking transnational migration, natural resources, and the environment in Guatemala. Population and Environment, Original Paper. doi: 10.1007/s11111-010-0125-x.

  • Murphy, L. L. (2001). Colonist farm income, off-farm work, cattle, and differentiation in ecuador’s Northern Amazon. Human Organization, 60(1), 67–79.

    Google Scholar 

  • Padoch, C., Brondizio, E., Costa, S., Pinedo-Vasquez, M., Sears, R. R., & Siqueira, A. (2008). Urban forest and rural cities: Multi-sited households, consumption patterns, and forest resources in Amazonia. Ecology and Society, 13(2), 2.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perz, S. G. (2002). Population growth and net migration in the Brazilian Legal Amazon, 1970–1996. In C. H. Wood & R. Porro (Eds.), Deforestation and land use in the Amazon (pp. 107–129). Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perz, S. G., Walker, R. T., & Caldas, M. M. (2006). Beyond population and environment: Household demographic life cycles and land use allocation among small farms in the Amazon. Human Ecology, 34, 829–849.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Quisumbing, A., & McNivel, S. (2010). Moving forward, looking back: The impact of migration and remittances on assets, consumption, and credit constraints in the rural Philippines. Journal of Development Studies, 46(1), 91–113.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Resurreccion, B. P., & Khanh, H. T. V. (2007). Able to come and go: Reproducing gender in female rural–urban migration in the red river delta. Population, Space and Place, 13, 211–224.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Robson, J. P., & Nayak, P. K. (2010). Rural out-migration and resource-dependent communities in Mexico and India. Population & Environment, Research Brief. doi:10.1007/s11111-010-0121-1.

  • Rosenzweig, M. R., & Stark, O. (1989). Consumption, smoothing, migration, and marriage–evidence from rural India. Journal of Political Economy, 97(4), 905–926.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosenzweig, M. R., & Wolpin, K. I. (1993). Intergenerational support and the life-cycle incomes of young men and their parents: Human capital investments, coresidence, and intergenerational financial transfers. Journal of Labor Economics, 11(1), 84–112.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rudel, T. K., Coomes, O. T., Moran, E., Achard, F., Angelsen, A., Xu, J. C., et al. (2005). Forest transitions: Towards a global understanding of land use change. Global Environmental Change-Human and Policy Dimensions, 15(1), 23–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sana, M., & Massey, D. S. (2005). Household composition, family migration, and community context: Migrant remittances in four countries. Social Science Quarterly, 86(2), 509–528.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, N. J. H. (1982). Rainforest corridors: The transamazon colonization scheme. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stark, O. (1991). The migration of labor. Cambridge, USA; Oxford, UK: B. Blackwell.

  • Stark, O., & Lucas, R. E. B. (1988). Migration, remittances, and the family. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 36(3), 465–481.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • StataCorp. (2009). Stata: Release 11. Statistical Software. College Station, TX: StataCorp LP.

  • Taylor, J. E., Rozelle, S., & de Brauw, A. (2003). Migration and incomes in source communities: A new economics of migration perspective from China. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 52(1), 75–101.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Todaro, M. P. (1969). A model of labor migration and urban unemployment in less developed countries. The American Economic Review, 59(1), 138–148.

    Google Scholar 

  • VanWey, L. K. (2005). Land ownership as a determinant of international and internal migration in Mexico and internal migration in Thailand. International Migration Review, 39(1), 141–172.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • VanWey, L. K., D’Antona, A. O., & Brondizio, E. S. (2007). Household demographic change and land use/land cover change in the Brazilian Amazon. Population and Environment, 28(3), 163–185.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • VanWey, L. K., Guedes, G. R., & D’Antona, A. O. (2008). Land use trajectories after migration and land turnover. In Population association of America. New Orleans, LA.

  • VanWey, L. K., Hull, J. R., & Guedes, G. R. (forthcoming). Capitals and context: Bridging health and livelihoods in smallholder frontiers. In K. Crews-Meyer & B. King (Eds.), The politics and ecologies of health.

  • Walker, R. T. (2003). Mapping process to pattern in the landscape change of the Amazonian frontier. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 93(2), 376–398.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walker, R. T., Moran, E. F., & Anselin, L. (2000). Deforestation and cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon: External capital and household processes. World Development, 28(4), 683–699.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walker, R. T., Perz, S., Caldas, M., & Silva, L. G. T. (2002). Land use and land cover change in forest frontiers: The role of household life cycles. International Regional Science Review, 25(2), 169–199.

    Google Scholar 

  • World Bank. (2008). World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wouterse, F., & Taylor, J. E. (2008). Migration and income diversification: Evidence from Burkina Faso. World Development, 36(4), 625–640.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yang, D., & Choi, H. (2007). Are remittances insurance? Evidence from rainfall shocks in the Philippines. World Bank Economic Review, 21(2), 219–248.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Brown University, Box 1916, Maxcy Hall 112 George Street, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Leah K. VanWey

  2. Environmental Change Initiative, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Leah K. VanWey

  3. Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Gilvan R. Guedes

  4. Interdisciplinary Center for Territorial Studies, Universidade Vale do Rio Doce, Governador Valadares, MG, Brazil

    Gilvan R. Guedes

  5. School of Applied Sciences (FCA), State University of Campinas (Unicamp), Limeira, SP, Brazil

    Álvaro O. D’Antona

  6. Population Studies Center (NEPO), University of Campinas (Unicamp), Campinas, SP, Brazil

    Álvaro O. D’Antona

Authors
  1. Leah K. VanWey
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Gilvan R. Guedes
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Álvaro O. D’Antona
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Leah K. VanWey or Gilvan R. Guedes.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

VanWey, L.K., Guedes, G.R. & D’Antona, Á.O. Out-migration and land-use change in agricultural frontiers: insights from Altamira settlement project. Popul Environ 34, 44–68 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-011-0161-1

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-011-0161-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation