ABSTRACT
Migration to a new context often means a change in work patterns for women. For example, married women who move from rural to urban areas or who migrate internationally frequently enter the paid labour force in an effort to help the family survive in its new setting. Single women migrants work to support themselves and may also send resources home to their families. In Latin America, migration has been best documented for girls and women moving to urban areas (see, for example, Young 1982). But another important form of migration in a number of Latin American countries involves movement to pioneer zones in the forests on the frontiers of settlement. In contrast to urban migration, rural-to-rural migration to new land settlements often means that women lose rights in land, lose direct income, face increasing workloads, particularly in reproduction as education and health services are poorer, and suffer painful social isolation. Such changes have been documented in new land settlements in Bolivia, Brazil, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe (Townsend forthcoming b); generally they occur where the settlements include unusually high proportions of men.
