ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of frontier migration and settlement has been an integral component of most societies' demographic and economic history. It has been frequently promoted as a state policy of population redistribution, revenue enhancement, and agrarian development. Furthermore, the embedded logic suggests that frontier migration, as a mechanism of labor transfer from densely settled areas to the sparsely populated virgin region, creates a much needed labor pool and leads to agricultural and hence regional development through the clearance, reclamation, and cultivation of new lands. Critics of the safety-valve effect of frontier migration, therefore, assert that migrants from well-to-do classes generally realize upward mobility as they are endowed with both capital and social connections. If migration is to contribute to migrants' household economies as well as to local and national economic development, it is imperative that the labor power embodied in hill migrants be gainfully utilized.
