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Rural Poverty, Population Mobility, and Agrarian Change: a Historical Overview

Abstract

To overcome some economic difficulties, especially poverty, most poor people in the rural area decide to adopt a migration strategy (especially going to foreign countries). The decision to become International migrants contributes to the national economy (foreign exchange) at the macro level and their nuclear family (remittance) at the micro level. The remittance or cash money, in turn, enables them to meet their needs and even accumulate some assets (e.g. land and house) to be used as capital, resulting in a transformation of local agrarian structure. Some studies showed that the welfare of migrants' families has increased significantly. Such an improved welfare of poor rural families has made rural community more dynamic in the vertical social mobility, including the efforts to extend their contract and motivate family members and the community to become International migrants (theory of cumulative causes, poverty-agrarian proposition, and poverty-migration proposition). This study has four initial hypotheses, namely: (1) change in agrarian structure affects poverty condition, (2) poverty (agrarian) affects population mobility, (3) population mobility (resulted remittance) affects agrarian structure, and (4) structural change in agraria causes new poverty. The diverse management and utilization of agrarian resources (poverty condition and the choice of population mobility —International migration) imply changes in the local agrarian structure which in turn produces new poverty and new agrarian classes

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