Temporary migrations in Amazonia: the Bolivian-Peruvian border region of Acre, Brazil.

In Acre State, at the western end of Brazil's Amazonian frontier, rural-urban migration produced high urban growth rates and the associated poor peripheries, as well as re-organized rural space. New rural land-uses have developed in recent decades in Acre -- extractive reserves, extractive settlements, national parks, large cattle ranches, and colonization projects. This new construction of space in Amazonia has produced a population that resides permanently neither in cities nor in the forest. This population depends on temporary work and migrates in search of work and land. Currently, these migrations involve forested lands in Acre and neighboring Bolivia and Peru. These Brazilian-Bolivians or 'Brasivianos' are now faced with accelerating social and environmental changes that are re-defining the space available for them. The changing confluence of the agricultural frontiers of these countries and Peru, coupled with all-weather road transport connecting southwestern Amazonia to Pacific ports, constitute new forces for these nearly invisible populations.(author's abstract)