How migration information campaigns shape local perceptions and discourses of migration in Harar city, Ethiopia

Migration-information campaigns informing potential migrants about the risks of the journey and the harsh life conditions in the destination countries have emerged as prominent tools of migration management in the last decades. Despite their growing importance, little is known about their local implementation in countries of transit and origin as well as their influence on potential migrants' perceptions and experiences. The central objective of this paper is to understand how migration-information campaigns are implemented on a local scale and how they shape the perception and discourses of migration in the region. We pursue a multi-scalar analysis of international migration management policies and their outcomes in a specific place and link them with local migration aspirations. The paper is based on qualitative empirical research carried out in Harar, a medium-sized city in the Harari regional state of Ethiopia. Drawing on interviews with government officials, NGOs, city dwellers, and return migrants, as well as the analysis of policy documents and scientific literature, we show how the local implementation of migration-information campaigns shapes the local perceptions and discourses on migration within which migration aspirations are embedded. We found that information campaigns did not take into account the complexity and multifaceted nature of local socioeconomic and political conditions which reflects the discrepancy between policy discourses at large and people's perceptions

Multiple Dimensions of Mediatised Translocal Social Practices. A Case Study of Domestic Migrants in Bangladesh

In the past decades, migration and translocal forms of living, including the spatial separation of households and families, have become everyday reality for almost a billion people. At the same time, mobile information and communication technologies, and especially mobile phones, have spread rapidly and are now accessible for many, even in poorer contexts in the Global South. The article combines practice-theory with approaches from media studies to examine how these two large themes intersect. It shows how the adoption of mobile phones by rural-to-urban labour migrants in Bangladesh is changing their translocal social practices, discusses key reasons for these changes, and their implications for translocal livelihoods and lives

Disciplining migration aspirations through migration‐information campaigns: A systematic review of the literature

In the past few years, governmental agencies have developed a diverse repertoire of migration-management measures to steer migration flows and discipline unwanted migration. Migration-information campaigns have become a prominent tool aimed at communicating directly to migration aspirations of the targeted population in transit and sending countries. Through these information campaigns the geographical locus of control is shifted toward where the receiving state seeks to steer migration flows. This review paper is a research synthesis on literature engaging with migration-information campaigns. The study is based on 17 peer-reviewed journal articles from the years 2010–2020. Articles were coded based on discipline, type of research, research perspective, geographic origin and focus of the campaigns, objectives and rationale of the campaigns, tools and methods used in those campaigns, campaign funding, actor constellations, and a general assessment of each article. Findings from this study identify prominent trends as well as blind spots in the current research and indicate that there is still little research available on information campaigns concerning irregular migration, and even fewer studies report on their effectiveness. By implication future research is advised to focus on empirical studies on the impact of information campaigns on migrants' aspirations

A systematic review of empirical evidence on migration influenced by environmental change in Africa

BACKGROUND Despite an increase in scholarly and policy interests in the impacts of environmental and climate change on migration, empirical knowledge in the field remains varied, patchy and limited. Generalized discourse on migration influenced by environmental change frequently leads to an oversimplification of the complex channels through which environmental change influences the migration process. The role of environmental and climate change in driving migration reported in existing studies seems to vary from one extreme to the other ‒ from limited and rather indirect role to significant impacts ‒ preventing us from drawing a conclusive evidence. OBJECTIVE This paper seeks to systematize the existing empirical evidence on migration influenced by environmental change with a focus on Africa, the continent most vulnerable to climate change. METHODS We combine elements of a systematic evidence assessment with a more reflexive form of evidence-focused literature review. 53 qualitative and quantitative studies selected from the comprehensive “Climig database” on the influence of environmental change on migration are systematically analyzed based on the framework of the multi-dimensional drivers of migration. RESULTS Environmental change influences migration in Africa in an indirect way i.e. through affecting other drivers of migration including sociodemographic, economic and political factors. How and in what direction environmental change influences migration depends on socioeconomic and geographical contexts, demographic characteristics and type and duration of migration. CONCLUSIONS It is not possible to draw a universal conclusion whether environmental change will increase or suppress migration in Africa since it is context-specific. CONTRIBUTION The review provides a first systematic and comprehensive summary of empirical evidence on environmental driver of migration in Africa considering direct and indirect pathways through which environmental change influence internal and international migration

Translocal social resilience dimensions of migration as adaptation to environmental change

There is growing recognition of the potential of migration to contribute to climate-change adaptation. Yet, there is limited evidence to what degree, under what conditions, for whom, and with which limitations this is effectively the case. We argue that this results from a lack of recognition and systematic incorporation of sociospatiality—the nested, networked, and intersectional nature of migration-as-adaptation. Our central objective is to utilize the translocal social-resilience approach to overcome these gaps, to identify processes and structures that shape the social resilience of translocal livelihood systems, and to illustrate the mechanisms behind the multiplicity of possible resilience outcomes. Translocal livelihood constellations anchored in rural Thailand as well as in domestic and international destinations of Thai migrants serve as illustrative empirical cases. Data were gathered through a multisited and mixed-methods research design. This paper highlights the role of the distinct but interlinked situations and operational logics at places of origin and destination, as well as the different positionalities and resulting vulnerabilities, roles, commitments, and practices of individuals and households with regard to resilience. Based on the empirical results, the paper distills a generalized typology of five broad categories of resilience outcomes, which explicitly considers sociospatiality. Our approach helps to grasp the complexity of migration-as-adaptation and to avoid simplistic conclusions about the benefits and costs of migration for adaptation—both of which are necessary for sound, evidence-based, migration-as-adaptation policymaking

Between a rock and a hard place: early experience of migration challenges under the Covid-19 pandemic

This working paper was produced under the European Union Horizon 2020 funded AGRUMIG project and traces the impact of Covid-19 on migration trends in seven project countries – China, Ethiopia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Morocco, Nepal and Thailand. The context of global migration has changed dramatically due to the coronavirus pandemic. Both within and between countries there has been a substantial curtailment of movement. As a result of multiple lockdowns, economic activity has severely declined and labor markets have ground to a halt, with mass unemployment in industrialized economies looming on the horizon. For both migrant hosting and origin countries – some are substantially both – this poses a set of complex development challenges. Partners of the AGRUMIG project undertook a rapid review of impacts across project countries, exploring the impacts on rural households but also identifying the persistent desire to migrate in spite of restrictions

Climate migration is about people, not numbers

It has become increasingly common to argue that climate change will lead to mass migrations. In this chapter, we examine the large numbers often invoked to underline alarming climate migration narratives. We outline the methodological limitations to their production. We argue for a greater diversity of knowledges about climate migration, rooted in qualitative and mixed methods. We also question the usefulness of numbers to progressive agendas for climate action. Large numbers are used for rhetorical effect to create fear of climate migration, but this approach backfires when they are used to justify security-oriented, anti-migrant agendas. In addition, quantification helps present migration as a management problem with decisions based on meeting quantitative targets, instead of prioritising peoples’ needs, rights, and freedoms

The behavioral turn in flood risk management, its assumptions and potential implications

Recent policy changes highlight the need for citizens to take adaptive actions to reduce flood-related impacts. Here, we argue that these changes represent a wider behavioral turn in flood risk management (FRM). The behavioral turn is based on three fundamental assumptions: first, that the motivations of citizens to take adaptive actions can be well understood so that these motivations can be targeted in the practice of FRM; second, that private adaptive measures and actions are effective in reducing flood risk; and third, that individuals have the capacities to implement such measures. We assess the extent to which the assumptions can be supported by empirical evidence. We do this by engaging with three intellectual catchments. We turn to research by psychologists and other behavioral scientists which focus on the sociopsychological factors which influence individual motivations (Assumption 1). We engage with economists, engineers, and quantitative risk analysts who explore the extent to which individuals can reduce flood related impacts by quantifying the effectiveness and efficiency of household-level adaptive measures (Assumption 2). We converse with human geographers and sociologists who explore the types of capacities households require to adapt to and cope with threatening events (Assumption 3). We believe that an investigation of the behavioral turn is important because if the outlined assumptions do not hold, there is a risk of creating and strengthening inequalities in FRM. Therefore, we outline the current intellectual and empirical knowledge as well as future research needs. Generally, we argue that more collaboration across intellectual catchments is needed, that future research should be more theoretically grounded and become methodologically more rigorous and at the same time focus more explicitly on the normative underpinnings of the behavioral turn