Increased migration to the cities and most certainly to Phnom Penh

Rural poor flock to cities

By Melinda Marshall

Money talks, as they say, and it talks loudest to those who have none.
The illusory lure of an easy buck is calling to the rural poor, who are
rallying to Cambodia's urban centers in growing numbers, researchers
and NGOs say.

The brave, the ambitious and the desperate are packing their dreams on
to motorbikes and into crowded minibuses and following money's gilded
path to Battambang, Siem Reap, and above all, Phnom Penh.

The trends that migration expert Bruno Maltoni is seeing throughout
Cambodia have convinced him that Phnom Penh and the other cities are on
the brink of a migration boom. And it is unlikely that existing
infrastructures and social programs can cope adequately with the
influx.

"There will be an increase of the slum areas, and a huge increase of
the informal economy. There will be a huge reservoir of a very cheap
workforce in the city," Maltoni told the Post.

"Phnom Penh is a small city, so it can't afford to absorb too many
migrants. Already there are too many migrants in Phnom Penh."

One of the biggest push factors from the countryside is the increase in
landless rural families. A cruel cycle of poverty, misfortune, and debt
- especially healthcare debt - is costing families their land and
livelihood, said Maltoni, a Royal University of Phnom Penh sociologist
and adviser to the International Organization for Migration and the
World Bank.

In Maltoni's view, landless people naturally turn to the cities,
because that is where the money is to be made.

Yin Touch is angry. Her eyes flash as she relates how she came to make
her home in the skinny shadow of a palm tree outside Phnom Penh's Wat
Sarawan. Three racks of laundry and an upturned metal crate mark the
territory that Touch, 39, has shared with her husband and three
daughters for seven years. The family came from Prey Veng province, the
origin of about half of rural migrants to Phnom Penh, thanks to years
of poor harvests.

"I used to have a lot of land until it was stolen from me," Touch said,
her voice rising in indignation. Dressed all in black with her hair
swept over one shoulder, she cut an elegant figure, even though one of
her cheekbones was collapsed. It looked as if it had been smashed in
long ago.

Most of the family's land was stolen during the Khmer Rouge regime, she
said. But the small portion that remained was still too expensive to
maintain. They had to hire a cow to plow the land to grow rice, but
that meant borrowing money to hire the cow. Their creditors ripped them
off with exorbitant interest that doubled the debt each month.

The family's downfall came because they were forced to guarantee the
land against the loan. When they failed to cover the mounting debt, the
creditors took the last patch of land.

Now Touch earns money by washing clothes, "coining" - a traditional
medical practice of scraping the skin with a coin - and begging.

What little she earns she dedicates to her daughters' education.

"Nowadays I live like a chicken,'' she said with disgust. Still, she
said, she would rather be in Phnom Penh than Prey Veng.

"If I go to Prey Veng I don't have land to live,'' she said. "It is
better to live here.''

Phnom Penh is a migrant city. At the last census about two thirds of
its population were migrants, although it is understood that many were
former inhabitants who returned after the Khmer Rouge emptied most of
the city.

Without a recent exhaustive survey or census, pinning down migration
patterns is an inexact science.

At the 1998 census a third of Cambodians had migrated from one part of
the country to another at some point in their lives. About 17 percent
of those who had ever migrated had once lived in the countryside and
now lived in a city. Most migrants - about two thirds - had moved from
one rural area to another, and that is probably still the case. But in
the five years prior to 1998, migration to the cities surged, with
about a third of migrants during that period coming from a rural area
to a city. Maltoni and his colleagues at the university put it down to
economic growth after the 1993 election.

They believe that migration to the city must have leapt again since
1998. NGO workers told the Post that they had noticed increases.

"In Cambodia, migration is quite new as a phenomenon. Until 1997-1998
it was quite dangerous because of the civil war," Maltoni said.

This month his department released the first study to exclusively
examine rural to urban migration.

A small-scale survey conducted for the study backs up the boom theory.

Of about 500 migrants interviewed in Phnom Penh, 46 percent had arrived
between 1999 and 2003, and 35 percent arrived between 1995 and 1999.

Maltoni likened Cambodia today to Thailand in the 1970s, in that a
first wave of intrepid internal migrants has now become established in
the urban centers.

The next stage would be the development of social networks that make it
easier for the less adventurous - and more vulnerable - to follow their
pioneering family members or friends to the cities, Maltoni said. In
other words, a massive increase of migrants.

But the second wave would also bring a host of social problems.

"From the Darwinian point of view it is bad, because migration is the
survival of the fittest," Maltoni said.

"Phnom Penh is getting more and more urban and there is more
development. But people outside the cities are living in the same style
as 500 years ago."

Without computer skills, without English or other languages, without
even familiarity with mobile phones, rural migrants can flounder in
their quest for survival.

NGO Mith Samlanh's Safe Migration Project has been working to smooth
the way for young migrants for three years.

The project has a network of police, motodops, taxi drivers and market
traders who rescue hapless and painfully young migrants from the
streets of Phnom Penh every day.

Three and a half weeks ago Vorleak (not her real name), 20, was one of
them.

With 6,000 riel collected by her friends Vorleak fled her struggling
village in Pursat province to escape a stepfather who tried to rape her
and a mother with an alcohol problem.

She decided to come to Phnom Penh because she had heard it was easy to
find work here. But when the minibus delivered her to Psar Thmey, she
had no idea what to do next. The wide-eyed girl passed two fruitless
hours asking passers-by to find her a job and growing increasingly
frightened.

As night drew in, she took the advice of a stranger and decided to try
her luck along the bank of the Tonle Sap.

Buzzing with people and possibilities, the riverside and Wat Phnom are
usually the first places migrants without connections seek out when
they arrive in the city.

But both locations pose serious dangers for young migrants - young men
are likely to fall in with gangs and drugs, and young women are likely
to be raped, especially on their first night in the city, which is when
they are most vulnerable.

Naive rural migrants on the streets are targets for human traffickers
and con artists.

As Vorleak cried herself to sleep near the riverside a woman approached
her and tried to persuade her to join her brothel.

Fortunately, an old woman who had been watching from a nearby house
rescued Vorleak and introduced her to the Mith Samlanh project.

Now Vorleak is learning to sew, and staying in Mith Samlanh
accommodation.

She said Phnom Penh was nothing like she had imagined, and if any of
her friends wanted to follow her, "I would tell them to stay in the
village, because it is not easy to find a job here."

But Vorleak is determined to stay. She said she could not face the
shame of returning to a village where everyone knew that she had to
leave because her stepfather tried to rape her.

Safe Migration Project technical assistant Tracey Sprott said it was
better to help migrants than try to stop them.

"We understand that people will want to migrate and that migration is
happening. We provide information to families and to youth at risk so
that they can make an informed decision."

But when migration workers have been able to find employment or
training opportunities for rural clients in their home provinces the
overwhelming majority chose to stay.

"The city is not really where they want to be," Sprott said.

"We need to create opportunities in the provinces to prevent families
and individuals having to migrate."

Meanwhile, slack economic growth in the provinces continues to push
people to the cities. The daily wage for an unskilled worker in the
city is two to three times higher than in the country.

Many rural Khmers move to the city for short periods, especially during
the dry season, to pick up extra cash in construction work, scavenging,
begging or as motodops or "beer girls." The popularity of temporary
work in the cities demonstrates that most urban migrants would rather
be at home.

That's certainly how Mom, another of Mith Samlanh's lost girls, sees
it.

Mom (not her real name), 23, ran away from her home in Kampong Chnnang
province to help her parents pay off a $300 debt they accrued when
Mom's older brother crashed a borrowed motorbike.

Like Vorleak, Mom said she would advise her friends not to follow in
her footsteps.

She often wished she had stayed at home, but she was also excited about
learning the beauty trade through a Mith Samlanh course.

Mom planned to stick it out in the big city until she had enough
experience to open her own business - back where she belonged in
Kampong Chhnang.

Back home she had a network of friends and family who gave her a sense
of belonging, she said.

But it was worth staying in Phnom Penh for now, Mom said, because it
was the one place where she had a shot at becoming independent.

Phnom Penh Post, Issue 15/02, January 27 - February 9, 2006
© Michael Hayes, 2006. All rights revert to authors and artists on
publication.
For permission to publish any part of this publication, contact Michael
Hayes, Editor-in-Chief
http://www.PhnomPenhPost.com - Any comments on the website to Webmaster

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