Rural Development And Migration

A Study Of Family Choices In The Philippines

Sally E. Findley, Calvin Goldscheider

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367286279
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000310351
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Perhaps because I grew up on a farm in Ohio, I have long been interested in rural development. Although I fll'St became a migrant at the age of 17 when I left the farm to continue my studies in a city college, I was not aware of the relation between rural development and migration until many years later when I began studying patterns of urban and rural poverty. This research has grown out of my continuing investigation of the ways that migration .has been seen as both a response to chronic conditions of rural poverty and a factor potentially exacerbating urban poverty conditions. If governments wanted to deal with urban poverty, they would want to restrict urban in-migration, yet if they reduced urban in-migration, this would remove one of the important means available to persons seeking to raise themselves out of rural impoverishment. This would clearly be a no-win situation for the rural poor; the only way to deal fairly with both urban and rural poverty would be to foster socio-economic development of rural areas. Thus, I became interested in studying the patterns of rural development which actually have had an effect on the migration decisions of rural families.

1
Rural Development and Migration: The Issues

If population growth in developing nations was the issue of the 1970’s, population distribution and mobility are the issues of the 1980’s. In the early 1970’s, half of the less developed countries considered growth of their metropolitan areas excessive, while by the early 1980’s almost all did so (Findley, 1977; Richardson, 1984). Excess growth of metropolitan areas is accompanied by unbalanced regional development, deterioration of the urban habitat, and destruction of natural resources, in addition to imposing serious drains on governmental resources by heavy demands for infrastructure and housing. Because of these adverse developmental consequences of excessive metropolitan growth, governments are eager to encourage population distributions which they believe will be more compatible with their development strategy (Richardson, 1984).

Although natural increase has equally or disproportionately contributed to excessive growth of metropolitan areas (Findley, 1977), migration is one of the few mechanisms available for altering existing population distribution patterns. Therefore, the concern with population distribution has been transformed into an interest in migration.

How can governments influence the movement of people? First, they can introduce programs which directly involve the movement or relocation of population. Examples are programs that resettle urban squatters in distant “New Towns” or give land to peasants if they move to designated rural colonization areas. These are equivalent to providing direct positive sanctions for adopting migration patterns that conform to some preferred distribution. Second, governments can use negative sanctions to discourage migration patterns that contribute to excessive growth of particular regions or areas. Examples are requirements of residence permits, with fees or other penalties attached to residence in an area for which one does not have a permit. Evaluations have shown that neither of these forms of direct sanctions for population movement or distribution has met with much success, either because they were extremely expensive per migrant, because they were unable to achieve the internal program goals of improving the welfare of the resettled persons, or because they were unable to enforce the expected levels of control of persons moving into or out of areas (Findley, 1981; Bharin, 1981; Simmons, 1981). Therefore, most attention has focused on the indirect policies, such as rural development programs, where the primary objectives are social and economic development with secondary objectives, perhaps not even explicit, of altering migration patterns and consequently population distribution patterns. By enabling people to meet their basic needs, these programs are expected to reduce the amount of migration which is responsive to spatial differentials in subsistence opportunities.

Theoretically, any program which achieves economic development should alter migration flows, since most migration is economically motivated. If a government is interested in slowing migration from its rural areas, any rural development programs should reduce the level of out-migration. Why, then is it that evaluations of rural development programs have given the programs a mixed review? Some rural development programs failed to have any influence on out-migration at all, while others had influences different from the expected pattern (Findley, 1981; Brown and Sanders, 1981; Standing and Sukedo, 1977).

According to conventional migration research, increases in jobs, particularly urban or modern sector jobs, are expected to reduce out-migration. Yet a recent comparison of migration from different communities in Costa Rica shows that in some areas such jobs had the opposite effect, of increasing the level of out-migration (Brown and Jones, 1985).

Recent village-level studies provide some clues regarding the underlying sources of these conflicting effects of development. In his research in Mexico, Roberts (1985) examined migration patterns from four different regions of Mexico, each with a different endowment of natural resources and level of agricultural development. He showed that the effect of agricultural change on farm income depended on the context of its introduction. In two of the zones, agricultural commercialization increased the riskiness of agricultural income, decreased agricultural employment, and led to more off-farm employment. However, in one region, the Bajio, much of the off-farm employment involved circulatory movement to the United States. Therefore, prediction of the migration outcome from agricultural development programs could not be made without information about the context of the programs’ adoption.

Though not so clearly illustrative, other studies show variations in migration depending on the different settings in which development programs are introduced. In the Ludewa District of Tanzania, two villages participating in the National Maize Project were studied. The rates of seasonal labor migration were markedly higher in one village, apparently due to differences in educational level and occupational aspirations of the children in the two villages (Lwoga, 1985). Yet another comparison of similar developmental interventions, this time the introduction of tubewells, showed that the tubewells substantially increased out-migration from a Pakistan community where tubewell use led to further increases in inequality and more out-migration. In Bangladesh, however, their introduction in a fairly egalitarian agrarian structure did not produce any increase in out-migration, because all shared in the increased production made possible by the tubewells (Gotsch, cited in Brown and Sanders, 1981: 171). Another example contrasted two highland villages of Peru. Because of their differences in traditional migration patternss, they have adapted differently to structural changes in the economy. One village has developed both trade and wage labor contracts that have enabled more families to maintain a base in the village, while in the other village most families are dependent on outside wage labor, primarily in the mining sector (Laite, 1985). In each of these examples, the pattern of migration adopted varied due to some underlying features of the communities. Without examining these differences in setting, it would not have been possible to explain the differences in observed migration pattern associated with development.

Although a major factor accounting for the ineffectiveness of rural development programs in influencing migration is the poor implementation of the development programs themselves (Lele, 1975; Chambers, 1983), part of the reason why rural development programs have failed to have the hoped-for results of decelerating rural out-migration is that they have not fully considered the particular settings in which the rural populace makes its migration decisions. (See Brown and Sanders, 1981, for a discussion of this point.) In some of these settings, the programs actually may allow more people to raise their incomes and thereby avoid or at least delay migrating; it is in these settings that the migration responses to programs would match expectations. But in other settings, either the programs may not match the needs of the people in that community or the effect of the programs is diluted by other factors, with the net result that the planned migration changes fail to materialize.

Therefore, to understand how a particular rural development policy is likely to affect migration decisions, one must consider specifically the types of people in the community and the community characteristics or setting itself, as well as the types of governmental interventions. This monograph presents research which simultaneously considers for the first time systematic evidence on individual family characteristics and community characteristics in the evaluation of the effect of development on migration.

The Farmer’s Dilemma

A basic premise of most rural development programs, and especially those seeking to decelerate rural out-migration, is that farmers want to stay in farming. Therefore, we should begin our evaluation of the ways that rural development influences migration with an examination of the validity of this premise.

According to rural development program advocates, farming is seen as the preferred lifestyle, because it is supposed to be self-sufficient, independent, and free from the stresses and strains of urban life. In addition, program designers assume that if farmers have the appropriate inputs and supportive services, it is possible to raise output sufficiently to generate a decent level of living among farmers (Weifcz, 1971).

Farming does have the potential for self-sustenance, and it is this quality which instills a commitment to farming (Shoemaker, 1976; Deere and deJanvry, 1979). From the farmer’s perspective, however, rural farm life often lacks the bucolic qualities attributed to it. Work loads are onerous, there are constant worries about crop failures, and rural health and nutritional levels are minimal at best (Elliott, 1975). Without land, without loans for fertilizer, without price guarantees or some other critical input, they are powerless in actualizing their dreams of a better life (Chambers, 1983). In most rural areas of developing countries those who lack the resources to attain a decent level of living or even self-sustenance far outnumber those who successfully support their families from their own cultivation activities (Elliott, 1975).

If you ask a fanner practically anywhere in the world whether it is easy to earn a living as a farmer, the response is almost surely going to be no (deJanvry, 1981; Kramer, 1977; Ledesma, 1982; Hayami and Kikuchi, 1981). Their income and level of living are governed by prices over which they have no control (Portes, 1978, Lipton, 1977). They must continually juggle their outlays for seeds, fertilizer, fuel, and other agricultural inputs against the expected sales value of their crops. If they are lucky, the sale of their products will enable them to pay off their debts and still have enough to live on. If they are not so lucky, debts cannot be repaid and even sustenance may be imperiled.

Given the farmer’s lack of control over prices, farming is a risky occupation. The problem is that many farmers have little choice but to stay in farming. They have little education and have no chance of a well-paid job, even if they were lucky enough to find a stable, salaried position. In most developing countries, the wage levels are so low for the unskilled jobs that peasants seeking jobs in cities cannot afford to support their families in the urban setting (Elliott, 1975).

The rural poor, those with some land and those without land, must seek alternatives that permit several family members to work (Standing, 1985:1–33). In many rural settings the sexual division of labor calls for women and children to continue and intensify their work in the agricultural sector, while men seek wage labor nearby or in distant locations as migrant laborers (Deere and de Leal, 1982; Standing, 1985; Stichter, 1982). Under this division of labor, the family continues subsistence fanning. With a low level of capitalization, the risk of great debt is reduced, but also reduced is the potential for raising farm incomes. This generates the peasant farmer’s dilemma: without participation in the wage labor force, the family does not have enough income to survive, but with this participation, they find it more difficult to obtain loans and supply the labor needed to raise production. Are there no short- or long-term avenues out of this impasse?

In the absence of institutional or familial credit sources, one long-term solution to the dilemma is to adopt a migration pattern that generates substantially higher revenues for the family, so that it can invest in needed farm inputs, assuming it wants to maintain its rural residence. Those who do not want to continue living in the rural area might adopt this strategy to establish an urban “foothold” that can serve as the base for eventual movement of the entire family into the city. In hopes of pursuing such a strategy, parents from Argentina to Zambia have encouraged their children to go to school so that they would have a better chance to compete in distant labor markets (Collier and Green, 1978; Moock, 1973). There is also much interest in international migration, which is seen to generate the very large savings and remittances needed to raise farm income or generate nonfarm sources of income that don’t require continued migration (Standing, 1985; Chilivumbo, 1985). This option, however, requires either extensive educational investments, high migration costs, or long-term migration overseas; hence, it is not the option pursued by the bulk of the rural poor.

Most farm families must pursue the second option, which is to depend on both farming and wage labor activities to support themselves. To offset the risk of insufficient farm income to meet their daily needs, they supplement their farm income with earnings from off-farm work. In contrast to their farm income, for each day’s or week’s work they know that they will get a certain amount of cash. Though by itself this cash income may not be sufficient for their family needs, when pooled with the income in kind or cash from their farm activities, the family is more likely to be able to meet its subsistence requirements.

Again, if the family is lucky, sufficient opportunities can be found in the local community for earning supplemental income. Otherwise, the family members who are seeking cash income will have to look elsewhere for work. Since earnings opportunities will vary from community to community, the migration patterns adopted by family members seeking supplemental earnings will vary across communities.

Even for families continuing to be involved in the agricultural sector, migration can and often must be a part of the family’s strategy to cope with their inability to raise their farm income. Like the farm families who seek migrant remittances as a means to lever themselves out of poverty, the families who seek only to maintain the barest minimum of income often adopt some form of migration in their pursuit of wage labor. We see, then, that from the farmer’s perspective, fanning and migration are an integrated system, not (Userete, exclusive choices.

Given the structural constraints characterizing the agricultural sector in most developing countries, policies which assume that families will entirely stop migrating if the sector is developed appear to contradict the realities of the situation. Nonetheless, there remains scope for intervention. If credit were available and other conditions favorable to farmers, fewer would need to count on migrant remittances to finance farm improvements. And many of the families pursuing the second option, the combination of farm and wage work, surely would prefer not to bear the social and economic costs of seasonal or temporary migration (Colfer, 1985; Connell, 1984).

Prices, land distribution, agricultural inputs and credits, and even off-farm jobs are all potential or actual dimensions of a regional or national agricultural and economic development plan. By studying the ways that the agricultural or economic development setting of a community condition the migration of its families, we hope to identify the ways that development efforts can provide more migration and staying options to families living in communities characterized by different developmental features.

Much as we’d like for development to be an infinitely available good, most planners are constrained by limited budgets for programs that must be divided among many competing clients (Caiden and Wildavsky, 1974). If program interventions are needed to provide more choices to rural farmers, the government must have the political will and power to shift resources from the current distribution to one which would open up more options for the rural population. Although this may look like the urban population loses out, putting the “last first” may be the only way to include in the development processes all people, not just the elites of the rural and urban areas, but also the urban or rural poor and the many migrants who shuttle between urban and rural poverty (Chambers, 1983; Elliott, 1975; Lipton, 1977).

Two Ilocano Families

The setting for this investigation is Ilocos Norte, the Philippines, a province where agriculture is the dominant occupation and where migration has historically figured predominantly in the strategies adopted by families for obtaining supplemental cash income. The following profiles of two different families will introduce the ways that farmers in this region have coped with the dilemma outlined above.¹

We have chosen to introduce these families here because the differences between them reflect on a human level the problem addressed by this research. Their stories, which convey a sense of divergences related to migration adopted by the families, elicit the question, “Why do such similar families behave so differently?” Multiplied thousands of times, that question becomes the fundamental question of this research. Their stories will help us focus on specific aspects of their situation which, in their case, and potentially in the cases of many other families like them, have contributed to their differences in migration.

The two families are the Coloma and the Agustin families. They are both large families, with nine or ten children. Both families own a small amount of land, but not enough to be self-sufficient from their farm activities alone. Their responses to their insufficient farm incomes have differed, however, with the Colomas relying heavily on the second option outlined above, temporary migration, as well as permanent out-migration of the grown children. In contrast, most of the Agustin children have stayed in or near their family home in rural Ilocos.

During the Second World War, Francisco Coloma was posted to other parts of the Ilocos Region, but since completing his schooling after the war he has lived in his home community of Marulan, located several kilometers from the city of Batac. Francisco and his wife Veronica have ten children, but only three of their children still live with them. The others have gone to Manila.

The second family is headed by Liberato Agustin, who also served in other parts of the Ilocos Region during the war, but he did not return home immediately after the war. For almost twenty years he worked in the province of Batangas as a welder. Since coming home from Batangas, however, he has lived in his home community of San Mateo. The Agustin family has almost as many children as the Coloma family, but unlike the Coloma family, only one of the nine children does not live either with their parents or in a house in the same community.

Like many other farmers in the barangay of Marulan, Francisco Coloma both owns and tenants some land. He owns 0.5 hectare and tenants 0.1 hectare. He and his wife work on their parcels every day. From their lands, they obtain 1800 kilograms of palay (unmilled rice) each year, but this is not enough for the family’s rice consumption, which is 2160 kilograms of palay per year. They must still buy 3 sacks of milled rice at a cost of about 400 pesos each. They get the money to buy this extra rice, as well as the fertilizer and other agricultural inputs, by raising garlic. On the 0.5 hectare, they raise about 53 kilograms of garlic, which in 1985 would sell for 1,600 pesos.

In addition to his farmwork, Francisco has sidel...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Rural Development and Migration: The Issues
• Chapter 2: An Approach to Contextual Migration Models
• Chapter 3: Family and Community Contexts of the Development-Migration Relation
• Chapter 4: Research Strategies for Examining Contextual Models of Development and Migration
• Chapter 5: Community and Family Profiles in Ilocos Norte
• Chapter 6: The Pattern of Family and Community Influence on Migration Decisions: Estimation of the Interactive Contextual Migration Model
• Chapter 7: The View from the Villages: How People Experience the Interactive Effects
• Chapter 8: Development and Migration: New Insights
• Appendix 1 Methodology for Collection of the Data
• Appendix 2 Procedure for Developing Indirect Measures of Concepts
• Bibliography