Thesis Abstract of AGS Students

Labour out migration and its socioeconomic impact on the community in Dok Kham Tai district, Phrayao province

Pocharawan Padermchai (1995)

This study was conducted at Dok Kham Tai district, Phayao Province. The objectives of this investigation were to study migration patterns of agricultural population, factors influencing out- migration, identify socio-economic impact and problems arising in the farm community and also to examine the community's perception and response to problem related to out migration. As a means to achieve these objectives, the information was collected by using formal questionnaire, and were analysed by descriptive statistics, statistics, multiple classification analysis (MCA) and means difference. Four models were tested using MCA, one was for the household level, three models were tested for the individual level, namely 1) males and females together 2) males only and females only.

The results revealed that both male and female migrants when they migrated, were single, young with generally not so high education and not specifically from the poor family. The multiple classification analysis revealed that families with land holding of 6-10 rai, total income more than 50,000 baht per year, number of household members more than 7 and no old aged people and children in the family had a higher tendency to migrate than other groups. The analysis at the individual level found that, the group which tended to migrate more were the group of single, 16-30 years old, high education level of undergraduate and graduate, and were the elder or eldest sons or daughters. Similar results were found for males as compared to females although education level was found to be a more important factor influencing migration among males while household status was a more important factor for female group.

The out-migration of the youngsters had some demographic impact on the communities such as decreasing in number of female in the family which lead to the decreasing in total population in Dok Kham Tai. As for economic impact, the better income from remittances led to the better quality of life and some amount of saving. With respect to farming, it was found that agricultural inputs such as labour cost was also higher in the group of households with migrants than the households without migrants. Labour shortage due to migration led to some mechanization in the village. There was a tendency for households with migrants to rent out land and stayed unem- ployed. While 71.4 percent of the households with migrants to rent out land and stayed unemployed. While 71.4 percent of the households with migrants spent some remittances on household expenditure, 44.9 percent of them did spend some on their farms including farm inputs and labour hire.

With respect to the opinion on Dok Kham Tai women migrants' occupation relating to the "special service" jobs both in Thailand and overseas, over half of the respondents did not find them detestable. They thought those jobs were honest and were done because their households were poor.

The negative impact on agricultural occupation is the perception of the rural community for the new generation to move away from farming. They want their children to join other sectors to get more money or permanent salary without work hard in the farm field.

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