The Dynamic Pathways of Agrarian Transformation in the Northeastern Thai-Lao Borderlands

Rural livelihoods in the northeastern Thai borderlands have moved away from being predominantly agrarian, yet farming remains a desirable alternative for many people. The empirical findings from fieldwork in a village in the northeastern Thai-Lao borderlands indicate how dependence on agriculture is determined by family contexts, such as land ownership, education level of household members, their gender and age. Cheap Lao labour and government price-support policies have enabled farmers to remain in production and diversify. Some educated rural people have successfully found employment opportunities outside the village as migratory wage labour, and are able to attain higher social status back in the village. Successful migrants have invested their earnings on cash-crop production and become rural entrepreneurs. Conversely, less educated migrants were unsuccessful in finding good jobs in the city and viewed agriculture as a more favourable alternative and valuable security. Geographical, cultural and economic specificities conditioned rural transformation and contributed to increasingly diverse and geographically extended livelihoods.

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