Reconsidering the links between poverty, international labour migration, and agrarian change: critical insights from Nepal

The role of international labour migration in processes leading to the (re)production of rural poverty in the rural South continues to shape critical academic and policy debate. While many studies have established that migration provides an important pathway to rural prosperity, they insufficiently...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	The Journal of peasant studies 2016-01, Vol.43 (1), p.39-63
Main Authors:	Sunam, Ramesh K, McCarthy, John F
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Affluence agrarian change Agricultural policy Agriculture Commodification Debate Differentiation dispossession farm labor Households Inequality issues and policy Labor market Labor migration Labor supply Labour market labour migration land Land tenure land use livelihood Markets Migrant workers Migration Nepal Payments people Poverty Production Remittances Rural areas Rural poverty South Asia Transnationalism
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Summary:	The role of international labour migration in processes leading to the (re)production of rural poverty in the rural South continues to shape critical academic and policy debate. While many studies have established that migration provides an important pathway to rural prosperity, they insufficiently analyse the profound effects that migration and remittances have on agrarian and rural livelihoods. This article uses the case of rural Nepal, where over half of the households are involved in foreign labour migration, as a ‘window’ to understand the processes shaping how migration effects poverty. The paper analyses how migration generates outcomes across the domains of rural people's changing relationship to land and agriculture, their experience of migration, and rural labour markets to advance our arguments. First, it argues that migration leads to the commodification of land, generating changes in patterns of land uses and tenancy relations. With respect to rural people's engagement with agriculture, migration generates both processes of ‘deactivation’ and ‘repeasantization’. Second, foreign migration offers an exit from poverty for some while also creating processes of deeper impoverishment for others. Third, migration leads to structural changes in rural labour markets, reducing the supply of agrarian labour. Consequently, in contrast to the simplifying ‘narrative’ accounts of a migration pathway out of poverty, this paper concludes that the effects triggered by migration are highly contradictory, providing an exit from poverty when linked to diversification strategies, while engendering rising inequality and rural differentiation.
ISSN:	1743-9361 0306-6150 1743-9361