Abstract
The objective was to investigate how frontier migration affects migrants socioeconomic improvements in the Tarai which is regarded as Nepals land frontier as well as its agricultural backbone. The investigation was based on personal observations and field survey data collected in the Tarai frontier districts of Chitwan and Nawalparasi in 1988. It was proposed that socioeconomic mobility at the frontier is predicated on: 1) the timing of migration and settlement 2) migrants previous socioeconomic positions and 3) the availability of employment opportunities. In 1988 Nepal was ranked as the fourth poorest country in the world. The average per capita holding of farm land is 0.16 hectare. Large-scale migration of people took place from the highland villages in the hills to the Tarai frontier in the plain stretching east-west along the Nepal-India border. According to the 1981 census the number of internal life-time migrants increased from 445000 in 1971 to almost 930000 in 1981. The sample comprised 407 migrant households from the hills. In terms of land-acquisitions they were grouped into government grantees purchasers self-occupiers and landless. There were 84 migrants (21%) who were landless in the hills and 166 (41%) near landless. To model migrants Tarai landholdings (TLAND) as the dependent variable was regressed against a set of predictor variables: the year of settlement (SETTLE) capital asset in the hills (ASSET) family size (FAM) education (ED) wage earning (WAGE) and Tarai settlement experience (INTERACT). Tarai landholdings were expected to be positively correlated with the first 4 variables but inversely with WAGE and INTERACT. The regression results showed that all of the predictor variables were significantly correlated with TLAND as expected. The year of settlement (SETTLE) was the dominant variable in explaining land acquisitions (TLAND) followed by capital assets in the hills (ASSET). These 2 variables explained 40% of the variance in the dependent variable TLAND.
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