Can Rural-Urban Household Mobility Indicate Differences in Resource Management within Amazonian Communities?

Abstract

This article aims to understand the relationships between rural-urban mobility and economic differentiation in Amazonian communities, through a multi-scaled methodological framework. We focus on Amazonian quilombola communities (Pará State, Brazil), and we use a rural-urban circulation index to untangle the concept of mobility system. We show that individual mobility patterns are embedded in a process of multilocalisation, articulating rural and urban areas at a collective level. Economic diversification relies on complementarity of circulation within households. In this sense, the ability of some families to maintain resource rights in different places is one of the premises for economic differentiation.