Dinâmica de desenvolvimento, redes e trajetórias migratórias no contexto da formação histórica de Imperatriz - MA.

Abstract

This doctoral thesis is the result of a study carried out with the objective of analyzing how regional development dynamics condition the formation of migratory networks and, in this sense, the very configuration of migratory trajectories observed in a given space / time. The central area of analysis is the municipality of Imperatriz, located in the southwest of the state of Maranhão, which has a historical formation constituted by cycles of economic development, influencing the migratory flows responsible for the settlement of the municipality from the 1960s. This construction of space is based on the historical materialist method, with which historical historicity and the contradictions present in the ways in which the development dynamics of the municipality of Imperatriz conditioned the migratory flows that populated it from the 1960s onwards. The data collected for the analysis constructed (Demographic Census data) was possible thanks to the work coordinated by the Statistics Office of IBGE / IBGE Municipal Agency in Imperatriz; In addition, interviews were conducted with migrants who arrived in Imperatriz in different historical cycles of their development. These data, together with bibliographical information and documents related to the historical formation of Imperatriz allowed the construction of the thesis that is organized in six chapters, discussing the theoretical bases of migration, population displacements in the Northeast Region in the 20th and 21st centuries, settlement in southern Maranhão and the migratory process during space occupation of the municipality of Imperatriz (in its historical formation and development in the period from 1960 to 1980). These approaches led to the main conclusions, indicating the constraints of economic cycles – construction of the Belém / Brasília highway; wood extraction; expansion of rice cultivation; exploration of gold – on migratory flows, coinciding with displacements of northeastern people motivated by the intense drought in the 1950s and 1960s. The importance of entrepreneurs, landowners and merchants in Maranhão as actors in the flows through establishment of economic bases in the municipality, including the implantation of vicinal roads, enabling the communication and transportation of labor, creating a favorable field for the different migratory trajectories nourished by the ample connection between families and municipalities. It was also verified the action of the State, propitiating migratory flows through projects of population of the Amazon. Despite the difficulties in different phases of the period analyzed, in particular difficulties of an infrastructure in formation, imposing important limits for the population displacement to the region where the municipality of Imperatriz is located, it can be stated that the migratory process occurred from the second half of the twentieth century was crucial for the formation of the municipality, constituting a current population reality, which highlights the performance of the "unnatural" and their descendants, born in the Imperatriz herself.