7-4 The Search for Work

Raising Families, Building Homes

Every autumn, nearly ten thousand men travel to the US from Jamaica, Barbados, Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent, to pick apples in the Northeast and cut sugar cane in south Florida. Jamaica supplies 100% of the foreign labor for the apple harvest and 80% of the foreign labor for the sugar harvest. In South Florida, these men live and work five to six months without their families, in camps…

Migration Among the Garifuna

Migration has always been a part of the human experience. Most often, migration has been undertaken as a means of preserving or improving life and valued ways of life. However, a consequence of the industrial age has been the movement of people at the behest of outsiders, to serve as laborers in enterprises ranging from agricultural estates to mines to factories. In the twentieth century the…

Introduction - 7.4

Millions of migrants today are working outside their home countries. Perhaps half of them have fled persecution; the remainder are economic migrants seeking either permanent or temporary employment. Yet annual emigration from the Third World to developed countries and oil producing countries represents, at most, only 2 to 3 percent of the annual population growth of the Third World. Most…

CS Projects - Annual Review

Since 1972 about 60% of Cultural Survival's limited funds have been channeled to field projects. During the year we receive numerous international requests with regard to these projects. So, we have decided that the final number of each volume of the Cultural Survival Quarterly will include summaries of active projects. How Are Projects Selected? Cultural Survival does not design projects; the…

Migration and Underdevelopment: The Caribbean

Rural migration from the former British West Indies has been uninterrupted since Emancipation in 1838. Destinations are varied - local urban centers, neighboring Caribbean countries, the United States, Canada and England - as has been the length of stay away from home - a few weeks, a couple of years, two or three decades, a lifetime. Those who return after spending several years overseas have…

Migration and Cultural Survival

For people, as for other animal species, migration is a basic adaptive process. It modifies competition and selection in areas of origin, exposes migrants to new habitats and cultural patterns, promotes new genetic combinations, and, generally, induces changes in the areas of origin via feedbacks of people and ideas. Although often identified with massive refugee movements, migration is usually…

The Search for Work

THE search for domestic peace in Peru has never been more obscured by uncertainty and contradiction. As the present government teeters at the edge of its capacity to manage a guerrilla movement, the "Sendero Luminoso" (Shining Path) seeks adherents among the swollen ranks of the estimated 30-40% unemployed and the legion of underemployed. In the past 40 years, Peru's population has tripled,…

The Philippines: Rural Families, Urban Income

I'm telling my daughter that she shouldn't get married yet, we have too many expenses and we need her help. This statement, by the mother of a young woman working as a salesgirl in a provincial urban center of the Philippines, illustrates the family's dependence on their daughter's support. Like many other young people working in urban areas, this daughter regularly remits substantial amounts of…

The Decision to Migrate in Sudan

The effects of labor migration depend in part on who makes the migration decision, and the basis of that decision. Decisions by individuals not only affect village and family consumption levels, they may also start or enhance processes which transform rural social organization. Dar Masalit district of northern Darfur, Sudan lies on the border with Chad, in the southern half of the Sahel. It…

The !Kung San: A Labor History

South Africa's system of exploiting Namibian labor through the migrant contract system has been justifiably condemned by politicians and academics. In this system, male workers leave their families in the labor reservoirs of Ovamboland and Kavango and take lengthy contracts to the area of white settlement. There they are employed, often under atrocious conditions, for periods ranging from 6 to 24…

Report from Brazil

On June 2, 1983, Indians in the Xingu National Park, long heralded as the model reserve of Brazil's Indian agency, FUNAI, confiscated a private airplane. It had landed illegally on an airstrip, to which access is controlled by FUNAI. The Indians released the owner within 24 hours, but held the plane until early August, demanding improved health care, competent management, and the resolution of…

Paraguay: Land Titles for Indians?

Paraguayan law #904/81, the "Estatuto de las Comunidades Indigenas," was created in 1981 to provide land and land title to Paraguay's Indian communities. In the two years since the law's enactment, only two indigenous groups have received land; no resolve serious land problems that confront most Indians. Law #904/81 guarantees land to Indians to protect traditional lifestyles and allow them to…

Migration in Papua New Guinea

The visitor who spends a few days in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, will be impressed with the feelings of open space the city inspires, the modern look of the governmental center at Waigani, and the stores at Boroko. All give the appearance of a thriving and successful capital city. Visits to other coastal cities, such as Lae or Madang, will reinforce this impression of a young…

Indian-White Labor Relations in Ecuador

The Indians of Amazonia and elsewhere have often been characterized as being lazy. Teaching Indians "how to work" has often been cited as one of the necessary aspects of integrating them into national life. Such stereotypical views ignore the true nature of the labor market operating in northeastern Ecuador where the historic exploitation of Indians and whites persists, and national development…

Indian Girls Make the Best Maids

FOR more than thirty years, the Amuesha Indian community of Miraflores (Oxapampa, Peru) has provided young girls as servants to neighboring haciendas and the homes of the region's lumber barons. During the past ten years, as the demand for servants in the urban areas has grown, more and more Amuesha girls have been taken to Lima to work in middle class homes. Local "recruiters" - middle class…

Guatemalan Refugees in Mexico

The following is a report on the conditions of the Guatemalan refugees, most of them of Maya Indian descent, who have fled the border regions of Guatemala over the last 18 months. Due to the sensitive nature of the data presented here, it is impossible in most cases to cite sources. However, the greatest effort has been taken to verify and cross-check this information, all of which has been…

Guatemala: Indians under Mejia Victores

While the information contained in this report applies to the western highland area of Guatemala, similar if not identical conditions can be found in other regions of the country. Based on interviews and observations gathered in October of 1983, the following has been discovered:1) The mostly Indian inhabitants of this region are tremendously restricted in physical movement. Due to the system of…

From Lar to Kuwait

Men from the southern Iranian town of Lar (approximately 26,000) have a long history as merchants engaged in Indian Ocean sea trade and in local overland trading between the Persian Gulf and inland Iran. Laris assumed a new role in the trade of the Persian Gulf region with the beginning of oil production in Kuwait and other small states after World War II. At that time, Lari men began migrating…

Conditions Worsen for Brazil's Indians

Mario Juruna, the only Indian Representative in Brazil's Chamber of Deputies, convened a meeting of various pro-Indian organizations in Brasilia at the end of November to consider the seriously deteriorating situation of Indians throughout the country. The meeting was called in response to the killing of an Indian leader, Macal Guarani, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul on November 25. The…

Africa: Migration and Economic Crisis

Whether as displaced people or labor migrants, millions of Africans join the desperate, massive population movements across national boundaries on the African continent and to the West. In search of livelihood, they often face rejection and victimization within new nations struggling with declining economies and population pressure. The world was shocked by the spectacle of thousands of Ghanaian…

Australian Aboriginal Migration

Australian Aborigine migration has a long history. In addition to traditional migratory patterns, various Aborigine groups and individuals migrated as a result of contact with Europeans. Early post-contact governments in Australia created reserves to which many Aborigines were "encouraged" to relocate. Other migrations, particularly as contact increased, were the result of Aborigines being…

A View from the Mountains

How many of the Toraja in the South Sulawesi highlands of Indonesia have migrated to other islands in the archipelago or to cities in Sulawesi is not known; but the impact of migration has been significant for this group of 320,000. Toraja now speak of the past in terms of before and after migration (merantau). What has happened to cause this migration? Throughout the Dutch colonial era (1906-42…

"Joining the Navy to See the World"

In May 1975, Pedro Shihuango, a 19-year old Quijos Quichua Indian, and two of his friends returned home. As they stepped out of the small plane which irregularly visited Arajuno, an isolated Indian village in Ecuador's Amazonian jungle, their worldliness, and much of their earnings, shone like badges - bright polyester shirts, striped bell-bottomed pants, and leather, platform shoes. Pedro…