The end of the rural/urban divide? Migration, proletarianization, differentiation and peasant production in an ejido, Central Mexico

Abstract

This article explores the relations between agricultural production, international migration, wage labour and processes of differentiation among peasant households. It does so based on the analysis of the ejido Jesús María in the northeast of the state of Guanajuato, Central Mexico. The history of this ejido and how Mexican neoliberal policies led to increased levels of migration and proletarianization since at least the early 1990s is presented. Then, it presents how in this context the production of asparagus for agro‐export developed on the irrigated lands of this ejido, showing that this process went hand in hand with social differentiation and important changes in the distribution of land and water. Then, it presents the results of a household and production survey that shows that most peasant households combine agricultural production with local urban and rural wage labour, migration, remittances and/or other economic activities. Households that can live from agriculture alone have had important capital investments in agricultural production coming from international migration and remittances. Based on these results, it argues that, as rural communities become increasingly dependent on external ‘urban/global’ capital, the rural/urban divide has become increasingly permeable with important consequences for peasant economies and related social differentiation processes.

Analysis of Farmer Relocation Selection Behavior Based on Bayesian Network

“…Khan et al believes that farmers' decision-making behavior of moving is the result of their perception and evaluation of the external environment such as rural areas, small towns, and big cities [16]. Hoogesteger and Rivara think that farmers run, economic crimes, death/ escape/kidnapping of the head of the mutual aid society, natural disasters that cause the cooperative to fail to operate normally, abnormal computer network paralysis, mass petitions and demonstrations, and other cases that may cause great harm are the risks and unexpected risk events of mutual funds [17]. Nayak et al think that whether to develop big cities, medium cities, small cities, or small towns should be mainly regulated by the market, and the government can only guide them [18].…”

Mapping the expansion of berry greenhouses onto Michoacán’s ejido lands, México

“…México has undergone an agricultural transformation to produce irrigated crops for the export market since at least the 1990s (González-Estrada 2016, Hartman et al 2021, Hoogesteger and Rivara 2021. These crops represent a significant virtual water transfer to the United States (US) and other world markets, often from over-exploited aquifers and watersheds (Hoogesteger 2018, Rosa et al 2019, Hartman et al 2021.…”

“…Due to the peasant crisis in the 1990s, many ejidatarios went bankrupt, abandoning land production and moving towards cities or economic opportunities including labor migration to the US (Assies 2008, Hoogesteger andRivara 2021). The economic importance of agriculture in rural livelihoods greatly decreased, reducing interest in and attachment to agricultural land and facilitating the abovementioned processes.…”

Persistent rurality in Mexico and ‘the right to stay home’

“…5 The MIT-trained economist assumed that a reduction in agricultural employment would consequently reduce the rural population. Yet this view overlooked several factors that could potentially reduce rural migration: rural Mexicans had already widely diversified their sources of income; they exercised sufficient political clout to claim government subsidies to ostensibly buffer the impact of the trade opening; and a new rural-urban interdependence had emerged that would allow rural communities access to urban employment opportunities (Hoogesteger and Rivara 2020;Torres-Mazuera 2012). Indeed, at the time, two prominent migration experts predicted that while Mexico's pro-market rural reforms would increase cross-border migration in the short term, migration would subsequently fall after just a few years (Cornelius and Martin 1993, 491-492).…”