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The Slow Displacement of Smallholder Farming Families: Land, Hunger, and Labor Migration in Nicaragua and Guatemala

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  • Lindsey Carte

    (Núcleo de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Universidad de la Frontera, Temuco 4780000, Chile)

  • Birgit Schmook

    (Departamento de Conservación de la Biodiversidad, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR) Chetumal, Chetumal 77014, Mexico)

  • Claudia Radel

    (Department of Environment and Society, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322, USA)

  • Richard Johnson

    (School of Geography and Development, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA)

Abstract

Smallholders worldwide continue to experience processes of displacement from their lands under neoliberal political-economic governance. This displacement is often experienced as “slow”, driven by decades of agricultural policies and land governance regimes that favor input-intensive agricultural and natural resource extraction and export projects at the expense of traditional agrarian practices, markets, and producers. Smallholders struggle to remain viable in the face of these forces, yet they often experience hunger. To persist on the land, often on small parcels, families supplement and finance farm production with family members engaging in labor migration, a form of displacement. Outcomes, however, are uneven and reflect differences in migration processes as well as national and local political economic processes around land. To demonstrate “slow displacement”, we assess the prolonged confluence of land access, hunger, and labor migration that undermine smallholder viability in two separate research sites in Nicaragua and Guatemala. We draw on evidence from in-depth interviews and focus groups carried out from 2013 to 2015, together with a survey of 317 households, to demonstrate how smallholders use international labor migration to address persistent hunger, with the two cases illuminating the centrality of underlying land distribution questions in labor migration from rural spaces of Central America. We argue that smallholder farming family migration has a dual nature: migration is at once evidence of displacement, as well as a strategy for families to prolong remaining on the land in order to produce food.

Suggested Citation

  • Lindsey Carte & Birgit Schmook & Claudia Radel & Richard Johnson, 2019. "The Slow Displacement of Smallholder Farming Families: Land, Hunger, and Labor Migration in Nicaragua and Guatemala," Land, MDPI, vol. 8(6), pages 1-12, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:8:y:2019:i:6:p:89-:d:236830
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Wendy Wolford & Saturnino M. Borras Jr. & Ruth Hall & Ian Scoones & Ben White & Liza Grandia, 2013. "Road Mapping: Megaprojects and Land Grabs in the Northern Guatemalan Lowlands," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 44(2), pages 233-259, March.
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    Cited by:

    1. Kyoko Kusakabe & Chanthavisith Chanthoumphone, 2021. "Transition From Subsistence Agriculture to Rubber Plantations in Northern Laos: Analysis of Household Livelihood Strategies by Ethnicity and Gender," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(2), pages 21582440211, April.
    2. Alexander Panez & Ilka Roose & Rodrigo Faúndez, 2020. "Agribusiness Facing Its Limits: The Re-Design of Neoliberalization Strategies in the Exporting Agriculture Sector in Chile," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-26, February.
    3. Xiuling Ding & Qian Lu & Lipeng Li & Apurbo Sarkar & Hua Li, 2023. "Does Labor Transfer Improve Farmers’ Willingness to Withdraw from Farming?—A Bivariate Probit Modeling Approach," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-27, August.
    4. Richard L. Johnson, 2021. "Reversing Channels and Unsettling Binaries: Rethinking Migration and Agrarian Change under Expanded Border and Immigration Enforcement," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-19, February.
    5. Baslyd B. Nara & Monica Lengoiboni & Jaap Zevenbergen, 2020. "Implications of Customary Land Rights Inequalities for Food Security: A Study of Smallholder Farmers in Northwest Ghana," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(6), pages 1-20, June.
    6. Dupre, Samuel I. & Harvey, Celia A. & Holland, Margaret B., 2022. "The impact of coffee leaf rust on migration by smallholder coffee farmers in Guatemala," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    7. Uchendu Eugene Chigbu, 2020. "e-Tracking COVID-19 Disruptions to the Global Development Agenda on Land," International Journal of Environmental Sciences & Natural Resources, Juniper Publishers Inc., vol. 26(1), pages 1-9, September.
    8. Yuanjie Zhang & Shichao Yuan & Jian Wang & Jian Cheng & Daolin Zhu, 2022. "How Do the Different Types of Land Costs Affect Agricultural Crop-Planting Selections in China?," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-18, October.
    9. Nathan Einbinder & Helda Morales & Mateo Mier y Terán Giménez Cacho & Bruce G. Ferguson & Miriam Aldasoro & Ronald Nigh, 2022. "Agroecology from the ground up: a critical analysis of sustainable soil management in the highlands of Guatemala," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(3), pages 979-996, September.
    10. Christine Richter & Marthe Derkzen & Annelies Zoomers, 2020. "Land Governance from a Mobilities Perspective," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-9, January.

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