Land Ownership and Migration of a Rural Community in IRAN

Abstract

Most of rural people in Iran living in small villages were subsisting on small scale farming or animal husbandry in an arid environment. Farms and houses belonged to the landowners (malik or arbab) who lived usually in urban places. That is, most of inhabitants in villages were sharecroppers (ra'iyat) or share-tenants (ijareh-Kunandeh) and their families. They were largely dependent on the landowners or landlords not only economically but also socially even after the Land Reform, which started in 1963 and had apparently cleaned out share croppers and share-tenants. On the other hand, both urban and rural population of Iran increased rapidly after the World War II, and migration from rural areas to urban places was also noteworthy. The migration is thought to be stronger related to limitation in population carrying capacity of the villages The author had a survey trip to a village on the north slope of the Zagros mountains. and investigated the effects of socio-economic stratification on the population carrying capacity of the village as well as the capacity of the families for sustaining their members.