Labour Migration in New Guinea: a case study from Northern Papua*

Abstract

The attitudes of a group of Papuan (New Guinea) villagers to migrant labor and its effects upon them were examined. The Yega a small subgroup of the Orokaiva people living in the Mt. Lamington area of Northern Papua have been subjected to a long process of acculturation as a result of which they have shown a marked willingness to change their traditional subsistence economy and to adopt the techniques attitudes and mores of Europeans. Attempts to increase cash earnings have resulted since 1945 in a series of land use changes including the establishment of an agricultural cooperative the inauguration of a coffee planting scheme and more recently a cocoa project. The people have also shown increased interest in paid employment. As of January 1967 almost 1/3 of them were absent from their home villages working studying or as dependents. The occupations of Yega working in paid employment have undergone considerable change. Postwar change has been towards more highly skilled occupations. Education is the primary factor in the marked improvement in the skills of Yega workers. Some paid labor is available to the Yega within walking distance of their homes. In 1964 30% of the total population of Yega resided outside their home villages. The proportion of working age males living away from the villages was over 50% and of this group 23 men had been away for 10 years or more. 77% of adult unmarried males were absent from their traditional lands. In present day Yega society virtually all young unmarried men seek paid employment away from the village. There are 2 main reasons for their economic behavior as indicated by young Yega employees. There is a desire to conform to an already established pattern and the desire for money and what it can buy and for experience of life outside the village are strongly reinforced by their friends. And there is the influence of older relatives whose unskilled labor now yields so small a return that they no longer consider it worthwhile to go to work. From the perspective of the village the overall effect is that the skills and potential labor of its most active educated members are lost to it except for brief holiday periods. The young men remitted an average of 18% of their total income to relatives and friends who remained in the villages a range between 5-52%. Among the Yega the established pattern is for all young men to leave the village environment to work for wages. At the current stage of development in New Guinea as a whole the Yega are an atypical group. Their opportunities for educational advancement have been greater than those of most other New Guineans. The practice of permanent migration from the traditional rural environment to the sources of cash income is becoming so well established that should economic development begin to lag seriously behind social development serious dissatisfaction and unrest may ensue.