Large-Scale Land Concessions, Migration, and Land Use: The Paradox of Industrial Estates in the Red River Delta of Vietnam and Rubber Plantations of Northeast Cambodia

This study investigated the implications of large-scale land concessions in the Red River Delta, Vietnam, and Northeast Cambodia with regard to urban and agricultural frontiers, agrarian transitions, migration, and places from which the migrant workers originated. Field interviews conducted near large-scale land concessions for industrial estates in the Red River Delta and rubber plantations in Northeast Cambodia suggest that these radically different concessions are paradoxically leading to similar reconfigurations of livelihoods, labor patterns, and landscapes despite basic differences in these forms of land use. Both the Red River Delta and Northeast Cambodia are frontier environments undergoing extensive agrarian change with migration to work in the large-scale land concessions leading to a shortage of farm labor that anticipates changes in farming practices and farm livelihoods. These population movements will lead to further land-use changes as governments invest in the infrastructure and services needed to support increased population density in the receiving areas. In addition, labor migrations associated with these investments affect land-use practices both at the site of the concession and the places from where the migrants originate.