Migrações em áreas de agronegócio

Abstract

The expansion areas of the so called agribusiness in Brazil have strong demographic growth. In the root of this process, accordingly to the statistics, are the migration fluxes from other regions of the country. The coherence of these statistical data can be easily observed in any contact, even superficial, with these areas when we see that the social position "map" elaborated for those who live there refers to the actual birth place or supposed by the people or groups to which they are referring: "gauchos" (from Southern Brazil, more specifically from the state of Rio Grande do Sul} and "maranhenses" (from the state of Maranhão} in the soybean area of Mato Grosso; "paulistas" (from the state of São Paulo}, "paranaenses" (from the state of Paraná} and "baianos" (from Bahia} in the expansion area of coffee in the Triângulo Mineiro.

This conclusion has led researchers to establish linear causal connections: opening profit and job perspectives, the agribusiness would attract population excess from other regions, repeating what had already happened in other historical moments and other parts of the country. The performed fieldwork, integrated in a comparative Project, in those two states including the soy region of Mato Grosso and the coffee region of the Triângulo Mineiro-Alto Paranaíba in Minas Gerais, indicates a more complex reality. The migratory fluxes are not necessarily complementary. To understand this constant movement and crossing of various streams goes through, in our mind, understanding the strategies of social reproduction practiced by the involved families in these various movements, avoiding conventional classifications, which separate seasonal and definitive migrations, short- and long-distance migrations, and so on, as well as interpretations that, searching to establish wide explanatory links, simply end up by repeating and consecrat- ing, through the ideology of "pioneerism" or similar, the formules of by those who control the so-called agribusiness.