Migration as a driver of changing household structures: implications for local livelihoods and adaptation

Abstract

Rapid environmental change, increasing climate variability, land fragmentation, and underlying institutional lacunae have shaped rural livelihoods in India. Increasingly, rural-urban migration has been a significant livelihood strategy to manage risks, meet aspirations, and move out of increasingly unprofitable agriculture. I argue that this movement of people is changing shape household structures, and the metrics to assess these transitions, often through categories of male-and female-headed households, fall short in understanding the experiences and outcomes of migration. Using a household survey (n = 825) and life history interviews (n = 16) to study rural-urban migration in South India, I demonstrate that shifting household configurations due to migration and commuting have implications for the risk management strategies people undertake. This calls for an expanded understanding of the 'household', which captures the realities of multi-local households, and consequently, for an expanded conceptualisation of 'local adaptation'. Such an understanding is sensitive to the 'beyond-local' flows and networks that shape household risk management behaviour and has implications for improving the effectiveness of climate change adaptation interventions.

Exploring methodological approaches to assess climate change vulnerability and adaptation: reflections from using life history approaches

“…The conceptual diversity in CCVA studies also predisposes research to follow specific methodological approaches (Ford et al 2010;Singh et al 2017;Adamson et al 2018). These include qualitative case study-based methods (Campeanu and Fazey 2014;Joakim et al 2015), spatially mapping vulnerability hotspots (Varadan and Kumar 2015;Bouroncle et al 2016), indicatorbased assessments (Hahn et al 2009;Gupta et al 2010;Gerlitz et al 2017), participatory methodologies that co-produce adaptation solutions (van Aalst et al 2008;Fazey et al 2010;Howe et al 2013;Ayantunde et al 2015;Butler et al 2016), and more recently, historical and temporal approaches to examine trajectories of change (Nielsen and Reenberg 2010;Fawcett et al 2017;Adamson et al 2018;Gajjar et al 2018). This methodological diversity is detailed in Supplementary Material 1.…”

“…There are growing calls for unpacking CCVA studies to understand the role of intra-household dynamics in mediating risk management choices and their outcomes (Djoudi et al 2016;Rao et al 2020). Empirical evidence from gender and feminist political ecology is filling this gap by focusing on intra-household bargaining and gendered vulnerability (Rao et al 2020;Rao et al 2017;Singh 2019), but these remain peripheral to mainstream CCVA research (Ravera et al 2016;Thompson-Hall et al 2016).…”

“…exploring 'a sequence of events into a whole so that the significance of each event can be understood through its relation to that whole', thereby conveying 'the meaning of events' (Elliott 2005:3 in Lewis 2008). While semi-structured interviews can also capture temporality, they are relatively limited in emphasising how life events and key decisions are embedded in wider dynamics often beyond the individual's control (Singh 2019;Chimhowu and Hulme 2006;Singh 2018). LHs thus 'link personal experience with broader patterns of institutional change' (Lewis 2008: 561) connecting individual and the social (and at a conceptual level, structure, and agency) within the social sciences.…”

“…Third, LHs forefront the temporal nature of lives and livelihoods (Murray 2002;Locke and Lloyd-Sherlock 2011), giving insights into how household decisions are shaped by dynamic risks, changing aspirations, and consequent response pathways (e.g. Singh and Basu 2019;Singh 2019). This allows LH narratives to explore the dynamic contexts within which adaptation decisions were taken and can potentially help 'see' future decisions and identify entry points to shape adaptation behaviour.…”

“…There is a relatively small but growing body of CCVA research using LHs (or some form of them) to examine household trajectories of resilience and vulnerability (Bagchi et al 1998;Murray 2002;Sallu et al 2010;Shucksmith et al 2016;Singh 2019;Singh & Basu 2019), livelihood dynamics and their implications for household resilience (Rogaly and Coppard 2003;Ayeb-Karlsson et al 2016;Singh and Basu 2019), and as a way to creatively understand and communicate climate concerns (Moezzi et al 2017). These studies demonstrate that LHs go beyond case studies by 'providing respondents the chance to reflect on their own stories and report what they feel were crucial turning points rather than just submit a chronology of life events to be examined and interpreted by researchers' (Singh 2018 p., 3).…”