ABSTRACT
What migration flows result from the rapid capitalist modernization of a ‘demographic anomaly’? It will be remembered that Southeast Asia was described as anomalous because the richness of its physical environment (fertile plains, forested ridges, alluvial deltas; vast mineral and hydrocarbon resources; volcanic soils and marine abundance; complex intersection of land and sea), plus its strategic location between the advanced civilizations of East Asia and South Asia, contrasted sharply with the surprising sparseness of its population. The answer is that Southeast Asia has become, over the last 70 years, far less anomalous due to rapid population growth, and that the geography of this growth has reflected the importance of two main redistributions of population: (i) the migration of rural populations to already existing and newly built cities – the growth of the region’s largest cities (Jakarta, Bangkok, Manila, Ho Chi Minh City, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore) has been truly extraordinary, while typically, the migration of the rural poor is to slum districts within or on the outer edges of the metropolitan area which then, in many cases, suffer enforced clearance; and (ii) migration to previously relatively empty areas now being developed for new wealth-generating purposes – for agricultural crops (such as coffee in Vietnam), fish products (such as shrimps in Thailand), mineral resources (such as copper and gold in West Papua), tourism (both domestic and foreign, especially in Bali and southern Thailand), manufacturing (such as clothes and footwear in Cambodia), and forest products (notably palm oil in Sumatra and Borneo). The lives of very few Southeast Asians have been left untouched by the direct experience, or indirect influence, of these internal migrations during this period. Internal migration should not, however, be seen as only the passive outcome
of forces in the political economy of these countries. It was, itself, a major agent in the capitalist modernization project. People moved both because they wanted to make money and because they wanted the modern goods and lifestyles that that money could help them buy. As they moved, they undermined the social practices and certainties of long-established village life, and helped to forge the more fluid, ephemeral and self-referential lives of the city dweller.
The product of their migrations were new settlements, some of them slums in and around the city. Elsewhere, these new settlements were often built at the expense of the former inhabitants, frequently leading to resentment – witness, to take just one example, the continuing conflict between the Penan forestdweller (Dyak) people of interior Sarawak and the Samling Group timber company, whose operations are backed by laws implemented by the Sarawak government. Internal migration has, in recent decades, been a highly contentious phenomenon in Southeast Asia. Protest might be thought, on reflection, to be a fully justifiable response to
what is going on. Population redistribution consequent upon capitalist modernization has transformed the landscapes of the region. There is now very little primary tropical forest left; logging and cash crop planting have largely seen to that. Much of this forest clearance has been illegal; where the clearances are (ostensibly) legal, they are typically the product of ‘crony capitalism’ – specifically, the granting of permits to develop land (for example, for palm oil estates, mining projects, or major infrastructure investments) to those individuals and organizations that are already part of, or can demonstrate their loyal support for, the ruling elite. With the clearance of forest comes smoke pollution and upland gully erosion, and the destruction of downstream fluvial environments; with tourist resort development often comes the destruction of coastal areas (for example, mangrove swamps), and of their contiguous and off-shore marine environments; and with the rapid expansion of urban areas (residential, industrial, utilities, and commercial land uses) comes the loss of agricultural land and a rise in environmental pollution.
