Abstract
The population of Malay villages seems to have been rather unstable and mobile since the traditional period : a part of the population has often moved to new settlements, depending on the crowdedness of the original settlement and the accessibility of new land. This characteristic is still maintained to some extent among the present-day Malay villagers. This report deals with the case of Galok, a settlement opened in the last decade of nineteenth century about 40 kilometers up the Kelantan River, based on field data collected in 1970/71 and 1984. The population of Galok increased within the village at the rate of only 0.4 percent, in spite of the high natural growth of 3.1 percent in the same period. Rural-rural migration still plays an important part, though rural-urban migration has become popular among the young people. This out-migration has somewhat mitigated the partition of landholding. Another important feature of the pupulation change is in the household composition : many households have experienced a remarkable reorganization during this period, reflecting the elastic and flexible character of the bilateral kinship system among the Malays.
