This proposal requests funds to permit Drs. Thomas R. Leinbach and John F. Watkins, Department of Geography, University of Kentucky, to pursue with Dr. Fachrurrozie Sjarkowi and Mr. M. Bakir Ali, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Sriwijaya (UNSRI), Palembang, Indonesia, for a period of 24 months, a program of cooperative research on employment decisions, mobility, and enterprise development in Indonesian transmigration. The transmigration program, an important element of Indonesian development planning, seeks to improve the living standards and employment opportunities for previously landless agriculturists by moving them from densely populated Java and Bali to relatively underpopulated Sumatra. The central objective of this research will be to derive empirically a series of models which generalize types of transmigration household employment behavior with respect to off farm activities. These models will be contrasted with and tested against a series of hypotheses which form a theoretical model. Primary data for the research will be gathered from household interviews and several case studies in a sample of ten transmigration villages of South Sumatra province. Both sponsored and voluntary settlement households will be studied. The Indonesian transmigration program is an attempt to redistribute the population from densely populated areas to relatively underpopulated ones. This program benefits the nation by relieving population pressures, improving the economic well-being of the settlers, and providing development planning of the underdeveloped out islands. The testing of the generalized descriptive and predictive models will contribute to the understanding of employment behavior in rural settings and the role of short term mobility in these strategies. The collaborators are highly respected scientists in the field of this research. The present project will allow them to combine their talents and interests for mutual benefit. This project is relevant to the objectives of the Science in Developing Countries Program which seeks to increase the level of cooperation between U.S. scientists and engineers and their counterparts in developing countries through the exchange of scientific information, ideas, skills, and techniques and through collaboration on problems of mutual benefit.
