Translocal Relations and the Reoganization of Socio-Ecological Systems in Kenya and South Africa
Final Report Abstract
The central aim of this project is to understand the impact of human migration on the environments in migrants’ home areas. These dynamics are highly relevant for the conceptual understanding of socialecological coupling processes because livelihoods and natural resource management are highly dependent on influences from outside the locally defined system. Migration is considered a particularly suitable vehicle to tackle the more general question of cross-scalar impacts on local social-ecological systems (SES). The project seeks to advance knowledge on the migration-environment nexus on a conceptual as well as empirical level: Conceptually, the project seeks to develop and synthesize the discussion on two broad topics, which until today remain widely unconnected, namely translocality and social-ecological resilience. Empirically, the project is based on comparative research into rural-urban relations in Eastern and Southern Africa. One research focus is Kenya’s horticultural hub of Naivasha and its impact on migrant workers’ home areas in Western Kenya; the other one is the mining area of Kuruman in South Africa’s Northern Cape. The focus on two cases enhances a differentiated description and analysis of translocal relations and their impact on local environments. While both cases share some similarities (geographical setting, livelihoods system), they exhibit different migration patterns and are embedded in different higher-level economic and political settings. The comparative research will enable deeper insights into the impact of scale transcendent dynamics on the resilience of complex coupled SES. More specifically, the team addressed the following questions: What are the characteristics and main drivers of the translocal fields that have emerged in both research areas? What are the similarities, what are the differences? - How do migration-induced cross-scale dynamics and translocal fields influence mechanisms of coupling and de-coupling between bio-physical, social and cultural realms? - How do the ideas, knowledge and ideologies that migrants acquire in urban centers flow back into their sending areas, and what kind of footprints do they leave in terms of how the environment is perceived and transformed? - What are the material, political and discursive effects of these informational flows in terms of agricultural practices and sustainable resource use? Work in the research team is still in progress. We provide preliminary answers to some of these questions and address critical aspects pertaining to the more general migration-environment nexus before we elaborate some site-specific findings for the Kenyan and the South African research area. We reflect on both cases and suggest fruitful fields for further research.
Publications
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(2014) Deciphering migration in the age of climate change. Towards an understanding of translocal relations in social-ecological systems. In Gesing, F., Herbeck, J., Klepp , S. (eds.), Denaturalizing Climate Change: Migration, Mobilities and Space (Vol. 200, pp. 23-33). Bremen: Universität Bremen artec Forschungszentrum Nachhaltigkeit
Greiner, C., Peth, S. A., Sakdapolrak, P.
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(2016) Migration for Human Security? The Contribution of Translocality to Social Resilience. In: The Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs, 3 (1), 57-66
Sterly, H., Ober, K., Sakdapolrak, P.
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(2016) Migration in a changing climate. Towards a translocal social resilience approach. In: Die Erde, 147 (2), 81-94
Sakdapolrak, P., Naruchaikusol, S., Ober, K., Peth, S., Porst, L., Rockenbauch, T., and Tolo, V.
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(2016) Migration, Environment and Inequality: Perspectives of a Political Ecology of Translocal Relations. In R. McLeman, J. Schade, & T. Faist (Eds.), Environmental Migration and Social Inequality (Vol. 61, pp. 151-163): Springer
Greiner, C., Sakdapolrak, P.
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(2016) Socio-spatialities of vulnerability: towards a polymorphic perspective in vulnerability research. In: Die Erde, 147 (4), 53-70
Etzold, B., Sakdapolrak, P.
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(2016) The translocal villagers. Mining, mobility and stratification in post-apartheid South Africa. Mobilities, 1-15
Naumann, C., Greiner, C.
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(2017) Social networks and the resilience of rural communities in the Global South: a critical review and conceptual reflections. In: Ecology and Society, 22 (1):10
Rockenbauch, T. and Sakdapolrak, P.
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(2017): How scale matters in translocality: Uses and potentials of scale in translocal research. In: Erdkunde, 71 (2), 111-126
Porst, L. and Sakdapolrak, P.
