Waves of Bugis Migration to the Mahakam Delta: Livelihood Trajectories and Landscape Changes along the Rural Coastlines of East Kalimantan

This article describes an often overlooked dimension of land use change, namely the extent to which migration affects livelihoods and landscapes in destination areas. We concentrate on the long history of migration of Bugis from South Sulawesi province to the Mahakam Delta on the east coast of Kalimantan, which has taken place over hundreds of years. To understand this migration pattern, we first delve into the dynamics of Bugis mobility across the Sulawesi Strait by examining the push and pull factors that reshape the Mahakam Delta. We then examine the livelihood trajectories of the migrants, their political economic contexts in their sites of origins and destination areas, as well as the ways these dynamics result in social and ecological change. We categorized Bugis migration to the Mahakam Delta during the 20th and early 21st century as taking place in three different waves. Violence and security were the main push factors for migration, namely fleeing the chaos of civil war during the colonial and post independence periods. Along the way households sought out employment and access to arable land. Meanwhile, the pull factor involved abundant livelihood sources and relatively safe conditions in the Mahakam Delta. Working as farmers and fishermen during the earlier periods, migrants’ livelihoods changed significantly in the 1980s with the arrival of international shrimp companies stimulating decades of conversion of the Delta’s mangrove forest ecosystems. The financial crisis in the late 1990s that sparked the initial shrimp boom intensified the conversion, which also included turning migrant agricultural lands into ponds. The global commodity chains integrated the migrants into capitalist relations controlled by a few money lenders and pond owners, turning migrants into patrons in the form of pond workers. The few studies that discuss the relationship between migrants' livelihoods and landscape change generally address rural-to-urban out-migration. This study shows specifically that rural to rural migration can have significant effects on livelihoods and landscape in the migration destination areas.