Palm Oil, Migration, and Livelihood Insecurity: Community Development and Household Resilience Strategies in Indonesia's Transmigration Areas
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26418/mdwf8432Keywords:
palm oil, transmigration, household resilience, migration, community developmentAbstract
The expansion of oil palm plantations in the transmigration areas of West Kalimantan has created an ambivalent community development ecosystem, providing both income opportunities and livelihoods. This qualitative ethnographic analysis, conducted in Sanggau and Sintang Regencies, examines the experiences of transmigrant households in fending off the price pressures of fresh fruit bunches, limited land, rising production costs, intimidation from daily labor, and weak social protection. Data was obtained through participant observation, in-depth interviews, semi-structured interviews, field notes, and triangulation with village documents and institutional information. Findings indicate that household resilience stems not from the stability of the oil palm economy but from the ability to combine smallholder oil palm plantations, wage labor, migration, remittances, informal loans, family networks, and relationships with collectors and foremen. Migration serves as a cross-spatial social reproduction strategy that enables households to finance education, maintain consumption, mitigate risk, maintain productive assets, and foster hope of returning to the village. However, social network-based resilience remains fragile because intermediary relationships are ambivalent: they provide access to markets, jobs, price information, transportation, and short-term assistance, but simultaneously reinforce dependency, local hierarchies, and unequal bargaining power. Theoretically, the main contribution lies in a critical reading of community resilience as an uneven, daily negotiated adaptation practice, constrained by the political-economic structures of plantations. This framework broadens the study of community development by sitting household bodies within unequal structural relationships. Policy implications emphasize that oil palm community development requires worker protection, price transparency, strengthening farmer institutions, local economic diversification, youth skills development, and inclusive productive remittance utilization schemes.
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