Family farming in an Amazonian frontier: the sedentarisation in question

In the Amazonian context, some authors analyze the evolution of the agricultural frontier as a pre-determinated dynamic: the stabilization of the frontier, which has been colonized by family farmers, would repeat the Brazilian model of land tenure, with the domination of big properties and the marginalization of family farming. This paper is based on the hypothesis that the stabilization of the frontier depends on sedentarization strategies of the farmers: alongside public politics and the economic context, examining migration choices of family farmers is essential to understand the type of frontier stabilization occurring. Those strategies can not be seen as an economically rationalistic behaviour, but depends on the reproduction logics of the families. This paper focuses on the migrations of the farmers’ sons in the Transamazonian frontier in order to reveal the strategies of their families’ mobility, and their complex relations with the space and the society. Concluding with a statistical analysis showing that there is no factor explaining the whole migrations of the sons, I present a qualitative analysis in order to establish a typology of farmer families according to their mobility practices; and I attempt to map this typology to show its importance in different localities over 30 years. Finally, I point out that the stabilization of the frontier is closely linked with the families’ strategies, and that the debate on sedentarization requires a more complex model of the relations between social organization and land. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]