Dual dependence and Sepik labour migration

Abstract

Migration in Papua New Guinea has developed, over the past 100 years, primarily as a consequence of the migrant labour system (MLS). The central argument of this thesis is that a resulting migrant strategy of dual dependence has continued to affect contemporary migration patterns, promoting the emergence of a peasantry and hindering greatly the formation of a permanent urban proletariat. The thesis argues from the outset that an understanding of internal migration in any Third World country requires an appreciation of the historical-structural setting; and that, from this perspective, approaches to migration which emphasise the role of the individual as decision-maker have a number of shortcomings. The MLS, beginning in German New Guinea in the 1880s, operated within a specific set of legal, political and social conditions. The colonial state, through the MLS, sought to develop among male workers a temporary dependence on the wage economy, while at the same time it required the workers and their families to maintain a continuing long-term dependence on the village subsistence economy. Thus the migrant worker and his family, through their physical separation, were forced to cultivate a dual dependence on two economies. After the second World War, the MLS, it is argued in Chapter Three, remained a dominant influence on both 'contract' and 'casual' workers. This involved a continuing separation of most workers from their families: for at least two decades after 1945 the migrant group was dominated by single men under the age of 30, engaged in a pattern of circular migration. From the early 1960s, and notably after self-government in 1973, changing political, economic and social conditions led to the growth of towns and to the need for a more educated and stable urban workforce. By the early 1970s many wage earners' families were coming to town to take up long-term residence. The need for migrants to maintain a short-term dependence has become much less evident, but the question remains whether migrants still retain a long-term dependence on the peasant economy. The Sepik region is identified in Chapter Four as, historically, a major source of migrants. The effect of the colonial economy and the MLS on the spatial distribution of Sepik migrants is traced and evaluated. The historical background to migration from two groups of villages within the East Sepik Province is examined in Chapter Five. Labour migration was a key mechanism by which isolated villages were drawn into a peasant economy linked with international markets. An important feature of the peasant economy is the retention of nonconvertible clan ownership of the land and its corollary, the retention of landrights by absentees. The degree of commitment of East Sepik migrants to urban residence in 1973-74 is assessed in Chapter Six. From the evidence presented it is argued that a long-term dependence on the peasant economy remains necessary for most urban migrants. Nevertheless, there are definite signs of a small, permanent urban proletariat emerging. These trends are complemented by a comparison of the migration profiles of the two sets of East Sepik study villages. Patterns of both circular and permanent migration are identified and explained (Chapter Seven). The continuation of a strategy of dual dependence is evident from the high level of return migration among those over 35 years of age, in the significant female bias in the sex ratio of the resident village population and in the greater tendency for unmarried men to migrate. The strategy is also evident at household level. The population pressure and limited resource endowment of the Sepik river villages appears, however, to encourage permanent outmigration. The final question, addressed in Chapter Eight, concerns the costs and benefits of migration to the rural economy. Limited economic and social benefits have accrued to a small group of former migrants. But for the rural economy as a whole the conclusion is that migration, beginning and to a large extent continuing within a framework of dual dependence, has contributed greatly to the underdevelopment of labour-exporting areas such as the Sepik region.