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

Jefferson Fox, Tuyen Nghiem, Ham Kimkong, Kaspar Hurni and Ian G. Baird
Additional contact information
Jefferson Fox: East-West Center, 1601 East-West Road, Honolulu, HI 96848, USA
Tuyen Nghiem: Central Institute for Natural Resources and Environmental Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam
Ham Kimkong: Department of Natural Resources Management and Development, Royal University of Phnom Penh, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Kaspar Hurni: Centre for Development and Environment (CDE), University of Bern, Hallerstrasse 10, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
Ian G. Baird: Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA

Land, 2018, vol. 7, issue 2, 1-17

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: land concessions; tele-connections; livelihoods; labor; landscapes; Southeast Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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