Migration and adaptation: The impact of migration on women’s adaptive capacity in the Mahanadi Delta, India

The climate-migration debate has an overwhelming focus on the implications of environmental stressors for migration decision-making. A growing consensus among migration scholars points to a multi-causal relationship where environmental factors interact with others in complex and often unpredictable ways. There is a less explored, yet expanding, discussion on the role of migration as adaptation strategy. Increasing attention has been given to investigating the impact of migration on migrant-sending communities’ and households’ capacity to cope with environmental stresses and shocks. The gender dimension of the migration-adaptation relationship is, however, largely overlooked. Empirical studies that explore the gender differentiated effects of migration on adaptive capacity are lacking, and understandings of the migration and environment linkages at intra-household level are limited. Using the hazard-prone areas of the Mahanadi delta, in India, as a case study, this research seeks to address this gap by exploring the relationship between migration, gender and adaptive capacity. This study investigates how migration shapes and power dynamics and how this, in turn, affects women’s adaptive capacity to climate change in migrant-sending communities and households. In contrast to traditional binary approaches, it explores gender through the lens of intersectionality to unpack the multiple dimensions of power and contextualise the analysis in the broader spectrum of social identities and relations of caste, age, marital status and class. The primary methods of data collection were in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and gender-sensitive participatory rural appraisal (PRA). The combination of these tools delivered gender disaggregated understandings of adaptive capacity which are otherwise confined to homogenised analysis. Findings show that men and women face different everyday constraints that shape their views on the determinants, needs and priorities to enhance their well-being and capacity to adapt to climatic shocks and stressors. The analysis of power and social structures highlights some of the root causes of this differentiation and its dynamic nature. The processes shaping vulnerability, power and inequality are continuously renegotiated through migration through changes in household structures, roles and responsibilities. The study in fact points out that migration has different implications for adaptive capacity by influencing its barriers and opportunities with mixed effects among men and women in the areas of origin, depending on their caste, age, class and position in the household. This thesis argues that the ‘migration as adaptation’ discussions should put a greater emphasis on socially differentiated impacts, beyond economic and assets-driven assessments and with attention to intra-household dynamics. Moreover, this study highlights the need to develop approaches to the analysis of adaptive capacity able to capture less tangible aspects related power, inequality and subjective well-being. It finally underscores the importance of strengthening coherence and collaboration across the fields of migration, adaptation and gender in both academic and policy discourses.

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