The role of the environment within a constellation of interacting causal factors shaping mobility—the example of three oases in Northern Africa

Abstract

Northern Africa’s oases are fragile agroecosystems that, through environmental limitations on agricultural development, such as insufficient amounts of water for irrigation, have had to face a profound transformation of the environment on which livelihoods depend. A common strategy in such a situation is mobility. Though mobility responds to similar environmental limitations, the varying economic, social, demographic, and political contexts lead to divergent forms of it. Based on the mixed-method research conducted in the three oases located on the edge of the Sahara Desert (Mhamid in Morocco, El Faouar, and El Ferch in Tunisia), this paper explores the complex interplay of environmental and non-environmental factors shaping mobility. It highlights the need for a contextualization analysis of the mobility-environment nexus, illustrating how different factors’ constellations make mobility part of adaptation, coping, or escape strategies. The results reveal the dynamics of intertwined factors influencing mobility in the oases, sometimes dominated by environmental factors, other times by economic ones, and so forth. This makes their residents subject to fluid categorisation as environmental migrants, and the mobility-environmental nexus itself is highly complex.