Out-Migration and the Transition from Farming to Non-Farming in Chitwan, Nepal

Seung Yong Han Introduction The purpose of this study is to assess the effect of out-migration at the household level on the decision to transition from farming to non-farming in the context of the socioeconomically changing agricultural region, Chitwan, Nepal, over 10 years between 1996 and 2006. In the face of social and economic changes in a region where agriculture is the main business, out-migration’s social and financial remittances would give two main options for people who do farming. One is to intensify what they have been doing, which is farming, and the other is to change the mode of production, which is the transition from farming to non-farming. In this study, the focus is on the second topic; transition from farming to non-farming. As the review on the relationship between migration and environment by Hugo (2008) implies, this is important to explore due to three reasons. First of all, the effect of the outflux of migrants on the environment of origins has not been studied enough compared to the influx of migrants. Second, most of the studies focus on the direct relationship between migration and environment, but few have studied how migration affects the transition in what people actually do as a result of migration over time, which could bridge the relationship between migration and environment (Demeny, 1990). Third, few studies have looked at the relationship at the household level. Most studies have used aggregate data, and are thus unable to examine the micro-level mechanisms that underpin household transitions in agriculture. Since Chitwan is heavily dependent on agriculture, the transition from farming to