This paper investigates the relationship between social remittances and land-use change in the context of South-South migration. Focusing on the cyclical movement of Filipino oil palm workers between the Philippine province of Palawan and the Malaysian State of Sabah, we show how migrants transmit social remittances, such as ideas of prosperity associated with oil palm development and knowledge of production practices and land impacts of oil palm plantations. These social remittances affect farmers' decisions to engage in oil palm development within the migrants' home province, possibly transforming subsistence agricultural systems into large-scale, monocrop plantations. We argue that such land development outcomes are an understudied aspect of how migration affects developing countries, especially in the context of South-South migration. Research findings also suggest how migrants' social remittances are transmitted, diffused, and utilized at broader social and political units, beyond return migrants' households and immediate communities in Palawan. Decision outcomes, however, are variable, with households and communities either engaging in or opposing oil palm development, depending on how social remittances are interpreted. 1 We would like to thank Professors Prema Kurien and David Sonnenfeld for reading initial drafts of this paper. We are also grateful to the University Research Office of the Palawan State University for their feedback and research support.
Currently, smallholder farmers in the Philippines and elsewhere are being engaged in the production of rubber and oil palm for global consumption. Among these smallholder farmers are indigenous peoples who continue to practice traditional forms of swidden agriculture. There is then a propensity for emerging agro-industrial production regimes to increasingly interact with and affect traditional swidden agroecosystems. In this article, we endeavor to explore the application of the resilience concept in analyzing and comparing the persistence of swidden agroecosystems enmeshed in globally integrated agro-industrial production in the province of Palawan, the Philippines. Drawing from six months of ethnography, we compare the resilience of swidden agroecosystems interacting with rubber and oil palm production regimes using indicators developed specifically to evaluate the social and ecological resilience of agroecosystems. Our findings suggest that swidden agroecosystems interacting with rubber production indicate greater resilience as compared to those with oil palm. This difference can be attributed to the greater tolerance of the rubber production regime to swidden agriculture, as well as the regime's more flexible production management systems. However, we caution that any plans of the rubber production regime to follow the oil palm contract model may result in the decline of resilience of swidden agroecosystems in rubber-producing communities.
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