Mobile livelihoods

This chapter examines apolitical mono-causal depictions of cBmate-induced displacement by focusing on communities whose livelihoods are different affected by processes of environmental stress on the basis of their position within diverse systems of power. More specificalfy, it considers how the environment influences mobility decisions in the context of environmental stress such as climate change. It looks at the experiences of four countries—Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Ghana—to illustrate how (im)mobility decisions in terms of stractures of political and social power and disempowerment affect the livelihoods of vulnerable households. It also discusses how the exercise of power differs across different social groups and concludes with a reflection on the legitimizatiDn, maintenance, and contestation of power structures. 

Keywords displacement, livelihoods, environmental stress, power, environment, mobility decisions, climate change, Bangladesh,... 

In Bangladesh, rural livelihoods are compromised by multiple environmental stresses, and yet it is how the extant power structures mediate the impacts of such stress that dominates explanations of livelihood (in)secuiity and subsequent human (im)mobility. 

Alongside these customary, politico-judicial manifestations of power is the informal socio-economic collective power of the community which links community members through collective access to, and management of, key hvelihood resources. How this form of power is exercised has great relevance to the way in which environmental stress and shocks are absorbed by the community and how they configure mobility decisions in that context. For example, in most of the rural locations of our study, people pay for the water they collect from weUs the funds are then reinvested for the maintenance and future exploitation of water sources, which in turn conditions the extent to which livelihoods can be sustained, and out-migration resisted. 

These findings therefore lay the foundations for continuing research in two main areas first, on questioning the viabilty of adaptation—currently promoted as the primary response to environmental stress—in situations where power is so unequally available and second, on the greater significance of understanding the socio-economic and cultural determinants of livelihoods at the household level which shape mobility decisions in the context of environmental stress, with less attention paid to the role of so-called environmental drivers per se. 

Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, and Kuwait). The causes of forced displacement in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have included colonial experiences (as in the case of Palestinians expelled from the territory which became Israel), post-colonial contexts (such as Sahrawi and Kurdish refugees), civil war (Lebanese refugees), and conflict and post-conflict situations (Iraqi refugees). Alongside experiences of internal displacement, the region has also witnessed intersecting processes of forced displacement and forced sedentaiization of mobile and nomadic populations for whom movement and mobility are central parts of their lives and livelihoods. 

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