This paper provides a comprehensive analysis on bilocal migrants focusing on Surakarta City. The aim of the paper is to portray the patterns and characteristics of circular migration and therewith contribute to the wider literature on rural-urban migration. However, I have several issues with the paper as it currently stands which point to the need for revision.
We would like to thank you very much for your valuable comments and remarks as it has very much enriched and improved our paper.
Comment:
The reason of the selection of Surakarta should be added on the text. Semarang as the biggest city in the Central Java province has a more dynamic migration pattern instead of Surakarta, therefore a stronger reason and argumentation is needed in this matter.
Response:
The reason for choosing Surakarta is mentioned in the article on line 179 – 192. To reinforce site selection criteria, we have also included a clearer statement in our article in line 189 – 192.
Surakarta city was chosen as the study area because it has seen significant expansion in terms of city size in recent years. Furthermore, the economic activities of the city also include a dynamic population during the day and night, involving a wide range of informal sector activities, pointing to the likelihood of a high level of circular migration.
The authors describe quite detailed the method, the result, and the discussion. However, there is a lack of comparability with other studies in those parts. The comparison may provide more evidence that only 105 respondents is reasonable to show robust result and interpretation.
Response:
Previous studies are mentioned throughout the paper and we have further added to this. We especially wanted to highlight that although quite number of researches have been done on remittance and migrant characteristics, they mostly rely on secondary data. We have mentioned these previous studies in line 155 – 157 and have added more resources. This also strengthens the approach to our paper, which is one that engages with direct responses and primary source material.
On the other hand, studies on rural urban migration were mostly applied to explore the uses of remittances and migrant characteristics (Gubert, 2002; Quartey & Blankson, 2004; Cohen, 2005;
Zhao, 2005; de Haas, 2006; McKenzie and Sasin, 2007; Kirdar, 2009; Brücker & Jahn, 2011;
Garip, 2012; Viet & Mont, 2012; Gollopeni, 2015; Satti, Hassan, Hayat, & Paramati, 2016), without explicit attention on the mobility pattern.
Comment:
Please provide more explanation on how the authors develop five typologies. How the classification of livelihood in the urban and rural were classified?
Response:
The typologies were developed according livelihood profile of type of job (line 368 – 370) of rural urban migrant samples from the distributed questionnaire. We also added more information on the classification of livelihood typologies in the article which are now found in line 356 – 365 and shown in Figure 6.
Each typology was identified based on the livelihood profile of samples in rural and urban areas mainly from the type of job, and the relations between those two, as shown in Figure 5.
CITY
Main Job
VILLAGE
Supplementary Job Main Job Provide help for family
member’s job / business
Complementary Complementary
TYPOLOGY 1
TYPOLOGY 2
TYPOLOGY 3
Supplementary Job Main Job
Main Job No Job
TYPOLOGY 4 TYPOLOGY 5
Comment:
It is interesting that the authors have also classified two types of circulation pattern. Unfortunately, the typology and the pattern is still regard as a separate analysis result. A combination of typologies and patterns will provide more detail characteristic that may leads to more specific findings at least in terms of the livelihood. The authors also can show the length of stay in each pattern to provide more detail emerging patterns.
The paper might be of interest to provide stronger framework on formal-informal in rural- urban relation:
Lo, F.C., Salih, K. dan Douglass, M. (1981). Rural-urban transformation in Asia, in Lo (ed.) Rural-Urban Relations and Regional Development, Nagoya: Maruzen Asia, pp. 7-43.
The combination of typologies and patterns also need to be elaborated in the perspective of remittance so the three main findings (typologies, patterns, and remittance) can be further discussed more interactively in a better structure.
To summarize, I think that the paper is interesting. However, I strongly suggest the authors to strengthen the literatures in the sense that the overall logic of argumentation needs to be brought out much more explicitly. As the authors have mentioned in the introduction, it needs to be clearly discussed, to what extent the migration (mostly the bilocal nature) in the study area has resulted in positive/negative feedback for the rural/the urban, and how is it compared to the empirical studies saying that there is positive contribution on the rural. Thus, I would also suggest to re-structure the discussion part to show stronger link to the introduction and the result mainly to accommodate clearer argumentation on the amalgamation of the three main findings. Please also further check to avoid too many repetition of statements.
Response:
We have added the combination of typologies, pattern, and remittance use in our article as the final findings of our article to be more clear about the relation between those three elements (see Table 9 line 670 - 672). We agree that to have more comprehensive results, we would need to include the discussion on the urban elements as well. However, since our research is focused on the empirical results more on the rural side, therefore our discusssion was built more on connecting to rural development and its spatial movement pattern as well as livelihood typologies. The findings also answer why rural household members engaged in circular migration i.e; due to economic reasons (as decribed in introduction), as well as due to the cyclical pattern where migrants are mostly involved in informal sectors in urban activities (Hugo, 1982; Tacoli et al., 2015).
Table 9. The relation between livelihood typologies, circular pattern, and remittance use
Duration of stay Remittance use
Pattern
City Village
Type of
Jobs consumptive productive
Typology 1, 2, 3 Simple (+) (-) 1,2,3,4,5,6 household (+)
community (-) Typology 4 Simple - Multiple more less equal
Typology 5 Multiple (-) (+) 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
household (+)
community (+) household (+) community (+) Note: 1. Food shop workers; 2. Food vendors; 3. Other informal sectors; 4. Pedicab driver; 5. Semiformal sector workers; 6.
Comment:
Thanks a lot for doing research in very pertinent area. Migration is not new phenomenon globally but the kind of migration route people choose in developing world is slightly different than rest of the world. Rural people in developing world migrate to urban cores basically with a hope of enhancing their living standards. The kind of circular migration authors have been studied is timely. The depth and breadth of study presented in the MS seems interesting. However, authors presented qualitative stuff. I was looking for some hypotheses and statistical evidence to test those hypotheses. Given the volume of data, I am pretty sure authors could make use of some statistical tools such as Chi-square test to the very least. There are several figures which may not be required.
Presence of many figures and tables makes this MS heavy. Authors could do more to include only relevant facts and figures so that this MS looks interesting and appealing to the readers. Please find all of my comments incorporated directly in PDF version of the MS.
Response:
We very much appreciate your valuable comments and remarks, which has enriched and improved our article.
We do not include statistical test in our paper as our intention is to identify the typologies, spatial pattern, and remittance use and we elaborated that the results come directly from the distributed questionnaire. Some ‘hypotheses’ statement is directly answered from collected data gathered from the migrant samples. Some figures have been modified into tables and justified into international readers, as for example changing of local IDR currency into US Dollar and others edited materials. We also provided responses directly in each comment you made in the PDF format.
composition of rural-urban income of the circular migrants.
The amount of remittance to rural household is likely following the income earning by the migrants in the city.
Migrants who still have agricultural land in their rural origin would like to invest more on farm supporting activities instead other types of investment.
Simple and multiple pattern were identified as the circular pattern in this study; simple pattern indicates that circular migrants go to the same destination place while multiple pattern is practiced by those who establish more than two poles of orientation.
Temporary migration with a circular pattern is more likely to respond the urgent needs of the family and hence the household use is at importance priority then community.
1
The Bilocal MigrantRural - Urban Migration in a Central Java City:
2
Livelihood Patterns, Remittances, and Connecting the Impacts to Rural
3
Development
4
5 Iwan Rudiarto a,*, Rizqa Hidayani b, Micah Fisher c
6 a Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Diponegoro University, Indonesia 7 b Kota Kita Foundation, Surakarta, Indonesia
8 c University of Hawaii, United States 9
10 * Corresponding author. Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Diponegoro University, Jl. Prof. Sudarto 11 SH, Kampus UNDIP Tembalang, Semarang, Indonesia. E-mail address: [email protected] /
12 [email protected] 13
14 15
1
The Bilocal MigrantRural - Urban Migration in a Central Java City:
2
Livelihood Patterns, Remittances, and Connecting the Impacts to Rural
3
Development
4
5 Iwan Rudiarto a,*, Rizqa Hidayani b, Micah Fisher c 6
7
8 Abstract
9 The flow of mobility from rural to urban areas, whether involving long-term or seasonal movements, has 10 created its own characteristic patterns of lives and livelihoods. In particular, tThe trends of -in the form 11 ofbilocality, – in which an individual will spend part of the year in a rural area, and the other in an urban 12 area –, presents a unique and increasingly common manifestation of the circular migrant. Indeed, these 13 patterns are so common. It calls into question the notion of a singular home, or even the targeted direction 14 of migration. The purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamic of circular rural-urban migration in 15 Indonesia from a Central Java city and migrant points of origin. We examine migration in Surakarta city in 16 terms of its characteristics, mobility patterns, and remittance uses. Data were collected from 105 samples 17 cases among those classified as migrants, distributed across the study area among those classified as 18 migrants. We apply the Flocktracker software for our study, which is a mobile-based application that 19 combines online questionnaires and provides associated locational attributes. Most of the bilocal rural- 20 urban migrants in Surakarta migrated as a strategy to address the lack of income in rural areas. Migrants 21 not only circulate between two destinations from their rural origins to Surakarta, but also gravitate to other 22 cities as a multiple destination strategy depending on networks and employment availability. The type of 23 employment is based on migrant level of education, and the type of opportunity also structures the amount 24 of time migrants stay in urban areas versus rural ones. Return to rural areas tend to follow harvests and 25 holidays, while time spent in urban areas are determined by periods of peak economic opportunity. Wealth 26 accumulation and the utilization of remittances however, flow in one direction toward the rural place of 27 origin, and is mostly distributed for household uses like family consumption or home improvement, with 28 limited contribution to broader rural community development. A key finding of this study is that overall, 29 although As circular migration to urban areas supports rural household incomes, it is found less contributes 30 in limited ways tod to the imagined broader rural development outcomes, suggesting that, therefore, an 31 extensive policy interventions should look beyond job creation in creating jobs opportunities is at important 32 to attract more rural people to get involved in and identify other ways to support development ining rural 33 areas.
34 Keywords: circular migration, bilocal migrants, rural-urban migrants, remittances, rural development, 35 livelihoods, Surakarta city, Indonesia
36
37 1. Introduction
38 Global trends in the past few decades show that cities in developing countries are growing 39 rapidly. According to UN ESCAP & UN HABITAT (2015), the year 2008 became the tipping 40 point of the world’s population shift to a more urban world, whereby the global urban population 41 surpassed the rural. Subsequent predictions also show that by 2050, people living in urban areas 42 will consist of at least 65% of the total global population, of which most will be located in Asian 43 and African cities. These urbanization trends are buttressed by the greater opportunities for 44 employment and access to services in cities.
45 The unbalanced development in many Asian countries has led to internal and 46 transboundary migration, characterised by movements from rural to urban centres due to the 47 insufficiency of the agricultural sector to provide adequate employment opportunities (ILO, 2011).
48 This also applies across generational differences, whereby younger and seemingly more connected 49 and education opportunities where better educated individual which is younger individuals are the 50 ones encouraged to people do migrateion (Rosenzweig and& Stark, 1989; Taylor and Fletcher, 51 2007; Gödecke & Waibel, 2011). Within the last two decades, temporary migration in Southeast, 52 South, and East Asia has escalated considerably (De Braw A., 2010; Deshingkar & Akter, 2009;
53 Ha et al., 2009; Lam et al., 2007). This temporary migration can also be characterised as a circular 54 migration, in which rural households apply strategies of seasonal movements to complement 55 family income. It has been practiced for a long period where members of a family temporarily 56 leave to work in urban areas (Pham & Hill, 2008). This kind of movement is one of the perplexing 57 contributors to urban population increments in many large Indonesian cities, which expand into 58 peri-urban areas on the outskirts of where rapid urban development is already taking place 59 (Firman, 2002).
60 The increase of urban populations has been directly affected by urban development in 61 many Asian cities, indicated by spatial growth that extend beyond traditional city boundaries 62 (Hugo, 2006; Jones et al., 1999; McGee & Robinson, 1995). Rapid urban growth is derived from 63 three main factors, including natural growth of the city, rural to urban migration, and 64 reclassification from ‘rural’ to ‘urban’ (Hugo 2014; UN-Habitat & ESCAP 2015). While natural 65 growth is more dominant in shaping growth in a small region, rural to urban migration and 66 reclassification from ‘rural’ to ‘urban’ are most likely happening in sites transformed into 67 megacities, indicative of regions like Jakarta and Surabaya in Indonesia. This is not confined to 68 the growth poles as medium-sized cities like Semarang, Surakarta and Yogyakarta are also 69 experiencing similar trends. Moreover, in large countries like Indonesia, rural to urban migration 70 and reclassification of rural to urban accounted for more than 80% of urban growth in the 1990s 71 (World Bank & IMF, 2013). There has been considerable attention to the spatial dynamics of 72 urbanisation, peri-urbanisation, and the agglomeration of metropolitan areas (Webster, 2002; Leaf, 73 2011; Friedman, 2011). However, a different spatial dynamic is also common and largely 74 overlooked, which is shaped by rural-urban migration. Migrants to urban areas not only 75 considerably change the shape of the city, but particularly with circular migration dynamics and 76 remittances, also serve to transform rural spaces.
77 Rural spaces have been transformed into as part of drastic changes in its socioeconomic 78 development due to shaped by migration. The movement of rural people, and mostly the absence 79 of younger generations out of rural communities, has a great impacted the to social and economic 80 structures of most rural villages (Gödecke and& Waibel, 2011) which has . The decision- making 81 process for involves rural households and individuals to migrate were introduced have been 82 explained as the an empirical micro- migration models (Todaro, 1976; Todaro and Maruszko, 83 1987), whereby migration is considered as a short or long term human capital investment. The 84 consideration puts costs and benefits as the major concern in deciding to move into another 85 location. The decision on mobility of rural migrants into other location in a city to migrate is not 86 only intended to improve overall household’s income but also to diversify household risk. At this 87 point, mMigration thus provides gives the opportunity to reduce future risks particularly in the 88 rural agricultural sector, while also and increasesing the insurance of rural returning rural migrants
89 of having a place to return to when economic ventures do not succeed and their household 90 members in terms of economic issues (Rosenzweig, 1988; Stark and Taylor, 1991; Hagen-Zanker, 91 2008).
92 In most large cities in developing countries, spatial movement in terms of rural-urban or 93 temporary migration has been commonly found identified on the basis of due to economic reasons.
94 In Malaysia, economic reason in terms of income gap between rural and urban regions was the 95 cause of resulted in rural people engaged with rural urban migration to migrate to urban areas to 96 seek out work (Hussain et al., 2014). MeanwWhile in Thailand, some factors such as lack of 97 resource support for agriculture and debt were the main causes ofor family members involved in 98 rural urban migration to migrate (Gödecke & Waibel, 2011). In Indonesia, rural to urban 99 migration occurred due to economic conditions (Rakodi & Firman, 2009). Circular rural urban 100 migration has been a common phenomenon in many Indonesian large cities as the urbanization 101 process tends to attract more rural people to come to the city with many income opportunities 102 available while rural livelihood specifically employment opportunities has been degraded. Rapid 103 urbanization in Indonesian cities has caused the urban population to increase from 30.6% in 1990 104 to 44.3% in 2010 and 55.3% in 2018 (UN ESCAP & UN HABITAT, 2010; UN DESA, 2018) . 105 Even though the migration process has happened for decades, the economic crisis that hit 106 the country in 1998 accelerated these trends, followed by increasing numbers and intensity of the 107 migration process (Fallon & Lucas, 2002; Pratama, 2015). At that time, rural households simply 108 believed they had no choice but to diversify economic strategies by sending members of their 109 households to move to the city to seek alternative sources of income. For many rural areas, the 110 agriculture sector remains insufficient in generating a significant multiplier effect to fulfil labour 111 demands. This is supported by the fact that the land-labour ratio among average Indonesian 112 farming households is less than a hectare of land for cultivation particularly in Java (Manning, 113 1998; Mundlak et al., 2004), which might become the push factors for rural people to migrate to 114 cities, either permanently or temporarily. Circular rural-urban migration takes on many form 115 across different households, but nevertheless is increasingly part of most livelihoods strategies 116 among families.
117 Different terms are applied to temporary migration such as circular, seasonal, short term, 118 and spontaneous migration, following a diverse spectrum of motivations, desires, and 119 opportunities (Keshri & Bhagat, 2012; Nail, 2015). Zelinsky (1971) shows that movements have 120 a common purpose by seeking a temporary change of residence in the short term, in repetitive 121 patterns, which can be cyclical in nature. Circular migration captures those who move from rural 122 to urban areas but do not change their usual place of residence in the village, although they are 123 absent for periods longer than a single day to six months (Hugo, 1982). Some village-based 124 employment is usually preserved by circular migrants during their temporary absence. According 125 to Tacoli et al., (2015), while migrating to urban areas, circular migrants are closely linked to 126 extreme levels of urban informality, both in economic activities, housing and access to other basic 127 services. Similar conditions occur in Indonesia, whereby most rural migrants structure the 128 permanence of urban informality (Hugo, 1978, 1982). We engage with the term bilocal due to the 129 dual function and presence of the migrant in both rural and urban areas. The bilocal particularly 130 highlights the importance of both areas in that the importance of each remain, even when the 131 migrant is not presently located there.