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Rural Families and Income from Migration: Honduran Households in the World Economy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Susan C. Stonich
Susan C. Stonich
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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Extract

Although peasants have always been linked to larger economic systems, the expansion of capitalist agriculture and the augmented incidence of migration throughout the Third World in recent decades have transformed the peasantry and made it reliant on wage work in labour markets tied to the world economy as never before. In Latin America this transformation has taken many forms, but the overwhelming direction has been towards changing subsistence farmers into wage labourers. The overall effect has been that few rural households persist independent of wage labour, while the majority combine income from resource-poor landholdings with wage earnings. The dependence on off-farm income is especially significant among smallholder farm families who derive the majority of household income from off-farm sources.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , February 1991 , pp. 131 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

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18 Kearney, Michael, ‘From the Invisible Hand to Visible Feet: Anthropological Studies of Migration and Development’, Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 15 (1986), pp. 331–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

19 For examples from recent work on the household see Netting, R. McC, Wilk, R. and Arnould, E. (eds.), Households: Comparative and Historical Studies of the Domestic Group (Berkeley, 1984Google Scholar) and Smith, Wallerstein and Evers, Households and the World Economy. For relevant studies on household economic strategies see Schmink, Marianne, ‘Household Economic Strategies: a Review and Research Agenda’, Latin American Research Review, vol. 19, no. 3 (1984), pp. 87–101Google Scholar. For research specifically on migration the following are helpful: Bach, Robert and Schraml, Lisa, ‘Migration, Crisis, and Theoretical Conflict’, International Migration Review, vol. 16, no. 2 (Summer, 1982), pp. 320–44CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Safa, Helen (ed.), Toward a Political Economy of Urbanization in Third World Countries (Delhi, 1982Google Scholar) and Wood, Charles, ‘Equilibrium and Historical-Structural Perspectives on Migration: a Comparative Critique with Implications for Future Research’, International Migration Review, vol. 16, no. 2 (Summer, 1982), pp. 298–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 See Stonich, ‘Development and Destruction’, for a more comprehensive discussion of the research methodology including the sampling procedures, data base creation and data analysis.

21 Stonich, ‘Development and Destruction’.

22 See Boyer, ‘Agrarian Capitalism and Peasant Praxis’; White, ‘The Adult Education Program’, and ‘ Structural Factors in Rural Development’; and Stonich, ‘Development and Destruction’ for more complete discussions of the history of the growth of capitalist agriculture in southern Honduras.

23 Brignoli, Hector Pérez, ‘Growth and Crisis in the Central American Economies’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 15 (1983), pp. 365–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 White, ‘Structural Factors in Rural Development’.

25 Boyer, ‘Agrarian Capitalism and Peasant Praxis’.

26 Secretaría Técnica del Consejo Superior de Planificación Económica y Secretaría General de la Organización de Estados Americanos (CSPE/OEA), Proyecto de Desarrollo Local del Sur de Honduras (Tegucigalpa, 1982).Google Scholar

27 DeWalt, Billie R., ‘Microcosmic and Macrocosmic Processes of Agrarian Change in Southern Honduras: the Cattle Are Eating the Forest’, in DeWalt, and Pelto, (eds.), Micro and Macro Levels of Analysis in Anthropology, pp. 165–86.Google Scholar

28 Stonich, ‘Development and Destruction’.

29 Ibid., pp. 143–55. Figures from 1988 are from Secretaría de Planificación, Presupuesto, Coordinación y, Censo Nacional de Población y Vivienda 1988 (Resultados Preliminares) (Tegucigalpa, 1988).Google Scholar

30 Durham, William, Scarcity and Survival in Central America: The Ecological Origins of the Soccer War (Stanford, 1979), pp. 123–6.Google Scholar

31 Stonich, , ‘Development and Destruction’, pp. 129–43.Google Scholar

32 United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Agricultural Assessment of Honduras (Tegucigalpa, 1978), pp. 236.Google Scholar

33 The history of the south from conquest until the 1980s resulted in a spatial distribution in which the greatest number of people lived in the least favourable agricultural zones. At all points of time for which data were available, highland densities were approximately twice those in the lowlands. However, rates of growth differ considerably depending on the time period involved. For example, population densities increased 50% and 56% in the highlands and lowlands respectively between 1950 and 1961, a period of immigration from other areas; between 1961 and 1974 densities in the highlands increased only 12% while those in the lowlands increased 45%, the result of highland to lowland migration; finally between 1974 and 1985 highland rates overtook lowland rates of increase, 39% to 17%. Stonich, , ‘Development and Destruction’, p. 148.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., pp. 148.

35 Molina, Guillermo, ‘Población, estructura productiva y migraciones internas en Honduras: 1950–60’, Revista de Estudios Sociales Centroamericanos (1972).Google Scholar

36 Between 1950 and 1985, the urban population of Honduras grew from 18% to 40% of the total population—a rate of increase unsurpassed by any other Central American country. United Nations, Estimates and Projections of Urban, Rural, and City Population, 1950–2025 (New York, 1985Google Scholar). The growth of major urban centres in the south was part of this national trend. Although growth was centred in Choluteca, the major urban centre, it also included Nacaome and San Lorenzo as secondary cities. During the period 1950 to 1985, the population of Choluteca increased 560%, growing at an annual rate of 5.5% between 1950 and 1961, 6.5% between 1961 and 1974, and 7.1% between 1974 and 1985. Stonich, , ‘Development and Destruction’, p. 151.Google Scholar

37 CSPE/OEA, p. 97.

38 Ibid., pp. 97–9.

39 Ibid., pp. 112–4.

40 See, for example, Boyer, ‘Agrarian Capitalism and Peasant Praxis’; Boyer, Jefferson C., ‘From Peasant Economia to Capitalist Social Relations in Southern Honduras’, Southeastern Latin Americanist, vol. 27 (1984), pp. 1–22Google Scholar; Durham, Scarcity and Survival; Stares, La Economía Campesina; Stonich, ‘Development and Destruction’; Stonich, ‘The Dynamics of Social Processes…’; Stonich and DeWalt, ‘The Political Economy of Agricultural Growth’; White, ‘The Adult Education Program’; and ‘Structural Factors in Rural Development’.

41 Stonich, , ‘Development and Destruction’, pp. 254–301.Google Scholar

42 The household emerged as multi-dimensional, complex, and fluid—the elastic household—varying in terms of membership and in production strategies depending on factors affecting the adequacy of agricultural production, the availability of wage labour and other cash alternatives, the stage in the life course, and so on. Despite considerable diversity among households in the total configuration of economic strategies, the range of income-generating activities were similar: (1) Subsistence (domestic) activities done outside market relations which resulted in directly consumable goods; (2) Petty commodity production and commerce; (3) Wage labour/capital relationships with remuneration in wages or in kind; (4) Remittances that usually took place without immediate reciprocal exchange of labour or commodities; and (5) Contractual relationships over the use of land, animals, or equipment that led to rental income.

43 Boyer, , ‘From Peasant Economia to Capitalist Social Relations’, p. 21Google Scholar; Stonich, , ‘Development and Destruction’, pp. 255–62.Google Scholar

44 Stonich, , ‘Development and Destruction’, pp. 233–40.Google Scholar

45 A sample of five households in each of the two communities (total of ten households) discussed later in this article were chosen for a detailed household budget study. Householders were given materials with which to record daily sources and amounts of income and expenditures for one year. A research assistant who resided in the community collected and summarised these tallies every week. Further details on methodology and results are available from the author. Data were collected so as to be comparable with the household budget study done by Jefferson Boyer, ‘Agrarian Capitalism and Peasant Praxis’, in an adjacent area of southern Honduras in 1978. Boyer analysed nine household budgets and found that off-farm income comprised from 19% to 29% of total household monetised income. Although he does not separate migration incomes from off-farm incomes, per se, he does report that the majority of off-farm income is generated by seasonal agricultural wage labour done within the south. Further information on Boyer's budget study can be found in Boyer, Jefferson C. and Church, Tammie A., ‘Qué hay en la bodega? The Vanishing Reserves of Peasant Economies in Southern Honduras’, paper presented at the conference of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies (Mérida, Yucatán, 1987).Google Scholar These results support a number of other studies of peasant economy in Latin America. Deer and Wasserstrom, ‘Ingreso Familiar y Trabajo no Agrícola’, reviewed ten such studies. They found that the average percentage of income derived from off-farm employment ranged from 6% to 89% and that in five of the ten studies off-farm employment contributed more than 50% of total cash income. Further, the proportion of cash income derived from off-farm salaries was greater for low-income families with the smallest landholdings and dropped sharply for higher income families who owned large farms.

46 Stonich, , ‘Development and Destruction’, pp. 223–57.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., ch. vi.

48 Stonich and DeWalt, ‘The Political Economy of Agricultural Growth’.

49 Orocuina and San Esteban are pseudonyms for two communities located in the southern highlands.

50 In both communities the descendants of the initial founding families owned approximately 80% of the total land that was owned by members of the community. However, in San Esteban, this land was distributed among 26 (37%) of all households while in Orocuina, six (9%) households owned 87% of all land owned. Seventy-two percent of the land owned in Orocuina was purchased rather than inherited. In contrast, in San Esteban, land was almost equally divided between having been purchased and inherited. The suggestion that land was perceived as a commodity in Orocuina is supported by the fact that only one household in San Esteban reported selling land at any time (0.5 mzs.) while II households in Orocuina reported doing so (138 mzs.). See Stonich, ‘Development and Destruction’, for further comparisons of the two communities in terms of differences in patterns of household economic strategies and in the ways each community was integrated into the capitalist system.

51 Ibid.

52 Why and how these two communities established these contrasting social and economic patterns was extremely difficult to determine. An evaluation of the agricultural/natural resource potential revealed no significant differences. The initial settlement of these two communities has not been documented making it difficult to assess how and to what extent current patterns had their roots in that time period. Interviews with local residents, however, suggested that the period of initial settlement was basic in the formation of current social and land use patterns. See Stonich, ‘Development and Destruction’ for a discussion of differences in initial settlement patterns.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid.

55 Although it is plausible to characterise the first movement as a forced response to a set of so-called ‘push’ factors and the second much smaller movement attracted by ‘pull’ factors, such depictions are oversimplifications and fail to capture the complexity and the importance of migration either as a vital off-farm income generating activity or as an articulatory mechanism.

56 Mallon, Florencia, The Defense of Community in Peru's Central Highlands: Peasant Struggle and Capitalist Transition, 1860–1940 (Princeton, 1983), p. 249Google Scholar, argues that the most important variable affecting migration decisions is the changing needs of families throughout their development cycles. The household dependency ratio (the ratio of producing to consuming family members) and the labour resources that are available both within and outside the household over time are of undeniable importance. As I have shown elsewhere (Stonich, ‘Land and People in Peril’), such families are at much higher nutritional risk as well.