Labour Migration and Gendered Agricultural Relations: The Feminization of Agriculture in the Ejidal Sector of Calakmul, Mexico

Abstract

We examine the nature of the ‘feminization of agriculture’ in the semi‐subsistence, peasant production sector of southeastern Mexico, as associated with male labour out‐migration. Presenting findings from empirical work with smallholder producers, we discuss the impact of men's migration to the United States on women's participation in agriculture and gendered relations of agricultural production. In 2007, we conducted a survey of 155 semi‐subsistence, smallholder households in six ejidos. This survey was supplemented by ethnographic research in a single ejido. Our findings demonstrate the need to distinguish between farm labour and management in this sector, and the potentially significant (but focused) changes in the local relations of agricultural production wrought by gendered patterns of labour migration – specifically in tenure, land‐use decision‐making and the management of hired labour.

Toward the Integrated Framework Analysis of Linkages among Agrobiodiversity, Livelihood Diversification, Ecological Systems, and Sustainability amid Global Change

“…Third, the role of migration remittances is complex and may be either detrimental or beneficial with regard to environmental impacts in sending communities [89,90], which has seemed to motivate the growing number of case studies of livelihood diversification and environmental impacts in development. Gendered social relations and their role in agriculture and land use are an increasingly important focus of these studies [112,[172][173][174][175][176][177][178]. Yet research has not focused as systematically as we do here across the geographic and interdisciplinary integration of multiple forms of livelihood diversification (e.g., migration, on-farm diversification), environmental resource-and environment-specific systems (e.g., agrobiodiversity, soil, water, uncultivated biodiversity), and related gender relations.…”

Impact of commercial farming on household reproductive strategies in Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico

“…Ninety three percent of these worked "ejidos," which is a land tenure system that gives community members with land rights, known as "ejidatarios," the power to sanction any land sales. Finally, as opposed to the sending communities, Calakmul is a very isolated area where opportunities for off-farm employment are reduced, and virtually absent for women (Chabl e Can et al, 2007;Radel et al, 2012); situations, both, that have been linked to earlier marriages and childbearing (Caldwell, 2001;Singh, 1994;Singh et al, 1985). The promise of land availability and land tenure security motivated migration into the area, and, at least until 2003, parents still expected their children to grow up to stay in the area and become legal owners without the need to inherit .…”

People in motion, forests in transition: Trends in migration, urbanization, and remittances and their effects on tropical forests

“…Padoch et al (2008) show that in Amazonia many rural-urban migrants keep their rural consumption patterns in cities and continue to play a role in rural forest use decisions (Beard and Sarmiento 2010). Through the use of cell phones, women left behind in Yucatan, Mexico, confer with their migrant husbands in the United States over land-use decisions (Radel et al 2010(Radel et al , 2012, as do women in Nepal (Adhikari and Hobley 2012). Decisions about whether to send money home for investment in land, livestock or other expenditures are made by women migrating from forest areas in East Java to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore; both alone and in concert with their husbands in the villages (Peluso, pers.…”