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Roraima also differs from other areas of the Amazon, given the timid way in which corporate capital has ventured into the region. Despite its natural riches, there are no large-scale mining or timber operations, and local industries are embryonic. Resulting from the mild stage of capitalist exploration, and relatively recent human occupation, the number and intensity of conflicts over regional resources are substantially smaller.
Migration represented a leading role in the territorial, political and cultural formation of Roraima. During the 1970s and 1980s the state received a considerable influx of migrants from the North and Northeast regions of Brazil, especially from Ceará, Maranhão, Pará and Amazonas states. Overtime migration flows were perpetuated due to the workings of very active migrant social networks, linking very specific communities at origins and destinations. Internally, the city of Boa Vista has played a paramount role attracting immigrants from other states and then redistributing them to other municipalities. The importance of Boa Vista can be grasped from a quick examination of Roraima's urban network, where it exerts the role of a primate city in a highly unbalanced system.
The tremendous influx of migrants over the 1970s and 1980s had a direct impact in the creation of new municipalities, promoting regional development and economic change, which, in turn, fueled renewed migratory flows. The 1990s and 2000s witnessed an augmentation of such moves projecting an inversion in terms of importance of inter and intrastate moves in future years. After all, interstate long distance moves have historically dominated Roraima's migration system; nonetheless, over the last decades intrastate migration has grown at a much faster pace than longer moves.
In the near future Roraima is likely to continue drawing migrants from traditional areas given the organic nature of migrant social networks and its tendency to remain active over time. On the other hand, new migration flows are likely to arise and intensify as regional development will create economic opportunities for many, intensifying formal and informal communication channels. Within this context, the service sector, especially the public administration system will allure urban bound migrants from various Brazilian cities. However, one cannot deny the fact that Roraima remains an active agriculture frontier, where the perspective of acquiring a free plot of land is still viable. Thus, Roraima will still receive large waves of landless peasants in the near future, most likely from traditional source areas. Nevertheless, in order to become a valid alternative for the Brazilian poor, it is imperative that current abandonment rates within colonization projects are diminished, preventing them from turning into a demographic void, while the peripheral areas of the encroaching urban places become increasingly plagued with poverty
(Fragment from “The Colonization of Roraima State, Brazil: an Analysis of its Major Migration Flows (1970 to 2010)”, by Alexandre Magno Alves Diniz and Elisângela Gonçalves Lacerda, Espace populations sociétés [Online], 2014/2-3 | 2015, Online since 01 December 2014, connection on 10 January 2017. URL : http://eps.revues.org/5817 ; DOI : 10.4000/eps.5817)
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