Permanent migration Voluntary migration

RIGHTS AIPP AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP 147 • Rural to urban migration: people moving from the countryside to the cities. It is more common in developing countries where urban construction and industrialization cre- ate jobs, thus attracting people. • Urban to rural migration: people moving from the cities to the countryside. It is more common in developed countries where the higher cost of urban living forces poor people to move to the fringes of the city, to suburban areas. • Rural to rural migration: This takes place when people seek a better life in another part of the country. Often, this “other part of the country” are indigenous peoples’ territories, to which settlers are attracted. Many settlers migrating to indigenous peoples’ territories do it on their own. They are called spontaneous settlers. In other cases, it is indigenous people who move spontaneously into frontier areas, where they live with other settlers from other areas, to form mixed-ethnic communities. Often, however, it is the state which promotes migration to indigenous peoples’ territories. In such cases, the migrants can be called state-sponsored settlers. Large-scale state-sponsored migration often happens within the framework of explicit programs, which can be called trans- migration programs. Examples for transmigration programs involving indigenous peoples’ territories are those that have been implemented in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh; the Central Highlands of Vietnam; various parts of the Philippines, but especially on the islands of Mindoro, Palawan and Mindanao; and West Papua in Indonesia. Even where no explicit state program for settler colonization of indigenous peoples’ ter- ritories exists, government at least tolerates it. Settler colonization of indigenous peoples’ ter- ritories within the borders of a particular country is an aspect of internal colonialism. Other as- pects of internal colonialism are the massive exploitation of natural resources by logging, mining and power corporations, and large-scale land conversion for plantations, again either under the sponsorship or with the toleration of the state. EXAMPLE THE TRANSMIGRATION PROGRAM IN THE CHITTAGONG HILL TRACTS Mainly as part of its anti-insurgency strategy, the government of Bangladesh launched a large-scale transmigration program in 1979. Over the ensuing years, between 200,000 and 450,000 Bengali-speaking migrants from various parts of Bangladesh were resettled in all the three districts of the Chittagong Hill Tracts CHT. The majority of the migrants were Muslims. One of the key objectives was to increase the proportion of Muslim Bengalis living in the CHT. The presence of Bengali settlers loyal to the state would allow the state security forces to exert more effective control over the CHT. Naturally, turning the indigenous people into a minority in their own land would weaken them and their support to the armed resistance movement. Thus, while in 1951 the indigenous peoples accounted for 90.01 of the population of 287,688, by 1991 they made up only 51.43 of a popula- tion of 974,445. Module-7 RIGHTS AIPP AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP 148 Better known than internal colonization is the colonization of other parts of the world, such as the Americas, Australia and New Zealand, which were colonized by European settlers from the 16th to the 20th centuries. This is known as transcontinental settler colonialism, which is no longer practised. But people have always and for various reasons moved over long distances to live in other parts of the world. Today, international migration is a global phenomenon. International migration occurs when persons cross state boundaries in order to stay in an- other country for long periods of time or even permanently. There are many reasons for inter- national migration: to look for better economic opportunities; to join family members who have already migrated before; because of the political situation in one’s own country; to get access to better education. International migrants can be categorized as: • Legal economic migrants, who are usually business people and highly skilled workers; • Illegal economic migrants, who are usually low-skilled workers; • Political migrants, who consist of refugees and persons seeking political asylum. Depend- ing on the circumstances of their migration and the laws of the country they migrate to, they can be considered either legal or illegal. International migration is closely related to the creation of nation-states, national boundar- ies and the concept of citizenship. Citizenship in a nation-state vests a person with the inalienable right of residence in that state as well as other political and economic rights. Non-citizens do not have the same rights. They are subject to the state’s immigration law, which defines, among others, who can enter the country, take up residence and employment, for how long and where.

B. The Causes of Migraion Among Indigenous Peoples Today

Many indigenous peoples have legends telling about the movement of their distant ancestors to the territories they are now occupying. In most cases the migration happened many centuries ago. But there are also more recent movements of indigenous peoples, communities or individu- als. In the following we will be concerned only with these.

1. Seeking peace: migration to escape oppression and violence

For centuries, indigenous peoples all over the world have experienced oppression and vio- lence by dominant groups. Indigenous peoples’ responses have varied, depending on the par- ticular circumstances. In cases in which resistance proved disastrous in the long run, indigenous communities were sometimes forced to leave their ancestral lands and seek a safer future else- where. Sometimes direct political pressure was aggravated by resource scarcity, which may have also been a result of the pressure by hostile dominant groups, or it may have been caused simply by population growth. Ask the participants for examples from their own communities. Group Interacion Module-7 RIGHTS AIPP AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP 149 In Northern Thailand, many indigenous peoples founded their villages in relatively recent times. While some indigenous peoples, like the Karen and Lua, have lived there for centuries, all other indigenous ethnic groups – like the Lahu, Lisu, Hmong, Mien, Akha and others – have settled there only within the last 100 years, and most of them even only within the last 50 years. For the majority, the main reason for moving to Thailand was oppression in their places of origin, i.e. China and Burma. EXAMPLE: HMONG MIGRATION The Hmong’s ancestral lands lie in the southern provinces of China. Their relation- ship with the Chinese dominantly, the Han has changed over time but has, in general, been rather antagonistic since the Chinese have always regarded the Hmong and other indigenous peoples as “barbarians”. From the mid-18th century onward, from what we know, Han-Hmong relations deteriorated severely as suppression of the Hmong became increasingly harsh and the Hmong responded with a series of armed re- bellions. The wars became especially bloody between 1855 and 1881. Warfare and the severe oppression by the Chinese are generally seen as the main causes of the start of the Hmong exodus into Northern Vietnam and Northern Laos dur- ing these years. From there, the Hmong con- tinued to move southward and westward, into Thailand. Large numbers of Hmong were also forced to leave Laos in the wake of the In- dochina wars. Many Hmong were recruited into the “secret army” created by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to fight the com- munist Pathet Lao. After the US lost the war and the Pathet Lao took full control over Laos in 1975, about 25,000 Hmong fled across the border into Thailand. Tens of thou- sands have followed over the past 30 years. Most Hmong from Thailand were resettled to various countries all over the world. It is estimated that by 1990, more than 90,000 Hmong refugees had gone to live in the United States; 6,000 in France; 3,000 in Canada, Australia, Argentina and French Guy- ana.

2. Eking out a living: migration to escape poverty

Poverty is the main reason for migration among indigenous peoples. It has many causes, among which are: • Loss of land and resources due to encroachment by settlers, state and corporate re- source extraction like logging or mining, the construction of dams, or the establishment of plantations; Hmong embroidery showing the war in Laos and the people’s escape to Thailand. Module-7