Looking elsewhere : migration, risk, and decision-making in rural Cambodia

textInternational labor migration has become an increasingly common livelihood strategy in rural Cambodia, in some villages becoming a defining and normative part of community life. This dissertation is an ethnographic study of one such rural community, where migration to Thailand has become a primary livelihood strategy over the past decade. Drawing on three years of fieldwork in Chanleas Dai, a commune (khum) in Northwest Cambodia, my research explores the complexities of the migration decision-making process, and the meanings of migration for rural households. This work is motivated by debates within the dialogues of migration and development, most of which seek to understand the potential for migration to promote development by focusing on the impacts of migration. My work departs from previous studies by focusing explicitly on decision-making, seeking to understand how and why families make developmentally important migration decisions. This is a critical area of inquiry, as the potential that migration has to promote or sustain development rests on a series of individual choices, for example who migrates, or how households invest remittances. Yet research tends to focus on the outcomes of these choices, neglecting a sufficient understanding of why they were made. In Chanleas Dai individuals are deeply ambivalent about migration, understanding it as both a constituent cause of insecurity and also the best path to security, mobility, and status. Whereas migration is perceived as low-risk and high-reward, village-based livelihoods are widely perceived as insufficient, impossible, or too financially risky to be meaningful. These perceptions are strongly linked to the recent history of environmental distress in the area. As a result, households often prioritize investment in further migrations, rather than using wages earned abroad for local investment or production. This is particularly true among youth, who see few potential worthwhile strategies to "make it" at home. Credit and agriculture programs theorized to curb migration, and/or promote local investment have not substantively challenged these perceptions. My conclusions discuss these findings in terms of their implications for the migration and development dialogues, definitions and understandings of development, and rural development policies both within and outside of Cambodia.Sociolog

Loans and Leaving: Migration and the Expansion of Microcredit in Cambodia

Over the last decade, the expansion of microfinance institutions (MFIs) has dramatically shifted the availability of credit across the developing world. This recent development provides an opportunity to examine the relationship between household labor migration and access to and use of formal credit. Both theories of migration and the expectations of formal credit providers have suggested that labor migration and credit are substitute solutions to the demand for capital in the developing world, with the implication that greater access to formal financial services may stem migration out of rural places. Using household survey data from Cambodia, an MFI-saturated country, we find that households using formal credit and households with greater access to formal credit are more likely to have labor migrants than households without access. This association persists across size of loan, purpose of loan, remittances behavior, and for domestic migrations. These findings complicate our understanding of the relationship between credit and migration, and call for a greater recognition of the importance of context in framing migration behavior

Borders and Margins

Photographer Emmanuel Maillard and sociologist Maryann Bylander document the lives of Cambodian migrants in Thailand. Through photographs taken at border crossings, work sites, and living spaces, they highlight the ambivalence many migrants express about their experiences abroad. </jats:p

The Exclusionary Power of Microfinance

10.1525/sod.2021.7.2.202Sociology of Development72202-229United State

The Migration of Children from Mexico to the USA in the Early 2000s

Children comprise a significant share of immigrants around the world, yet scholarship has largely treated children as adult-like or adult-following actors in migration. We explore how the early life course and parents' migration structured children's migration from Mexico to the United States from 2002 to 2005, using the Mexican Family Life Survey, national survey data from Mexico that tracked 854 migrants, including 375 children, to the United States. We find that while parents' migration decisions matter at all ages, young children who migrate are nearly always accompanied by their parents, whereas the minority of adolescents are. Primary school-aged children and accompanied adolescents migrate in response to community violence and barriers to education, suggesting that their migration reflects concerns about where it is best to raise children. Adolescents who migrate without their parents do so in response to economic factors, much like adults; however, adolescents also respond to youth community migration prevalence, suggesting that youth-specific norms of migration frame their decision-making. The results show how the early life course structures three distinct profiles of child migration: complete dependents, children whose location choices reflect concerns about schools and safety, and near independents. More generally, the determinants and process of migration shift as parental oversight declines and social structures beyond the family-community violence, access to education, youth norms, gender, and labor markets-emerge as important