Frontier Migration and the Rural Environment in Ecuador

描述（由申请人提供）：整个发展中国家的农村社区正在通过向外移民到城市，边境和国际目的地而改变。然而，目前的办法并没有充分解决这种向外移徙的关键问题，包括更大背景在向外移徙中的作用。特别是，现有的研究没有涉及移徙与农村环境之间潜在的重要联系，特别是环境因素对农村地区向外移徙的影响。从早期对厄瓜多尔亚马逊地区移民定居者砍伐森林的研究中，我们提出了一个问题：为什么人们离开农村地区;环境退化、农村贫困、农场资产和其他因素的作用是什么？如何按目的地类型选择外移移民？决定移徙的因素如何因目的地类型而异？该项目将设计新的数据收集程序，作为家庭和社区一级调查的一部分加以实施，并将调查数据与遥感数据和空间衍生变量，包括地理可达性联系起来。这项研究的一个关键创新将是利用卫星图像和其他空间数据集制定和测试环境质量衡量标准，并将其与家庭环境状况调查数据进行比较。为了估计环境和其他因素对农村人口外流的影响，我们将使用一个多层次的迁移模型，该模型考虑到背景，个人和家庭因素，包括家庭，社区和更大规模的环境因素。这些结果将有助于形成一个广泛适用的框架，有助于今后对移徙与农村环境之间的联系进行实证研究。最后，移徙研究中的一个关键问题是移徙者的选择性，以及无法在基于原籍地的调查中观察或收集关于整个离开家庭的数据，因为家庭中没有留下任何人来提供可靠的信息。这种移徙家庭可能在重要方面不同于那些作为个人离开而其余家庭成员留在家里的家庭，影响向外移徙的因素可能也不同。因此，我们还将收集最近从近邻/亲属离开社区的整个家庭的数据，以比较他们的特征和他们向外迁移的决定因素与个人移民以及非移民和移民家庭。这将为从方法上评价移徙原籍地办法提供基础。该提案的重点是环境退化，如森林砍伐或土壤侵蚀如何影响人们离开厄瓜多尔农村地区的原因。人们离开世界各地的农村地区前往城市和其他国家。环境恶化使人们更难谋生，也造成健康问题。该提案研究了拥有良好的当地卫生设施和通往这些设施的道路是否有助于人们科普并留在农村地区而不是离开。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Rural communities throughout the developing world are being transformed by out-migration to urban, frontier, and international destinations. Nevertheless, key questions about this out-migration have not been addressed adequately by current approaches, including the role of the larger context in out-migration. In particular, existing studies have not addressed the potentially critical linkages between migration and the rural environment, specifically the effects of environmental factors on out-migration from rural areas. Growing out of earlier research on deforestation by migrant settlers in the Ecuadorian Amazon, we ask: Why are people leaving rural areas of origin; what are the roles of environmental degradation, rural poverty, farm assets, and other factors? How are out-migrants selected by type of destination? And how do the factors determining migration differ according to the type of destination? This project will design novel data collection procedures to be implemented as part of household and community-level surveys, and will link survey data to remotely sensed data and spatially derived variables, including geographic accessibility. A key innovation of the study will be to develop and test measures of environmental quality from satellite imagery and other spatial datasets and to compare them with survey data from households on environmental conditions. To estimate the effects of environmental and other factors on rural out-migration, we will use a multilevel model of migration that takes into account contextual, individual and household factors, including environmental factors at household, community and larger scales. These results will help generate a broadly-applicable framework useful in future empirical research on the linkages between migration and the rural environment. Finally, a key issue in migration research is the selectivity of migrants and the inability to observe or collect data in origin-area-based surveys on whole departed households, since there is no one left behind in the household to provide reliable information. Such migrating households may differ in important ways from those who leave as individuals with the rest of the household remaining behind, and the factors affecting out- migration may differ. Therefore, we will also collect data on whole households that recently left the community from close neighbors/relatives to compare their characteristics and the determinants of their out-migration with those of individual migrants as well as non-migrant and migrant-sending households. This will provide the basis for a methodological evaluation of the origin-area approach to migration. PROPOSAL NARRATIVE The proposal focuses on how environmental degradation such as deforestation or soil erosion influence why people leave rural areas of Ecuador. People are leaving rural areas all over the world for cities and other countries. Environmental degradation makes it harder for people to make a living, and causes health problems too. The proposal studies whether having good local health facilities and road access to them helps people cope and remain in rural areas rather than leave.