Searching for a Better Life: Peri‐Urban Migration in Western Para State, Brazil

Abstract

The world today is an urban world. While rural to urban migration has contributed significantly to the increased urbanization of the globe, that process has not always been as clear and permanent as it appears. In this paper we report on the migration of smallholders to peri‐urban interface () zones in western Pará state, Brazil. We found that rural‐urban migrants were constrained by their lack of marketable skills and as a consequence had few job prospects and experienced a low quality of life in the cities to which they had migrated. This led them to resettle in places at the where they have the ability to supplement limited wages with more familiar subsistence activities, which reflected cultural identity and rural antecedents while enjoying a higher quality of life. The recent implementation in Brazil of a variety of conditional cash‐transfer programs has added to the attractiveness of peri‐urban places and contributes to a regional shift to livelihoods based on a combination of agriculture and extractivism supplemented by support from federal assistance programs.