I’m Staying! Climate Variability and Circular Migration in Burkina Faso
Year: 2019
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: In the Sudano-Sahelian region of West Africa, the need for human adaptation to climate change and variability is not a new phenomenon. Since the 1970s, the Sudano-Sahelian region has been through a sustained climate crisis, with prolonged drought periods replaced in the early 1990s by significant annual precipitation variability. In response to these climatic trends, rural populations have diversified their livelihoods. One of the most used and described strategies is circular labour migration. This implies that rural dwellers migrate to areas with more widespread employment options such as major cities in search of wage labour, but return after some months or years to their villages of origin. In recent literature, the continued predominance of this migration pattern has been questioned. A major reason for this is that climate change might be encouraging more permanent forms of migration due to increasingly problematic environmental conditions in rural areas. This chapter explores contemporary migration patterns among residents of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso by way of ethnographic research. The chapter shows that since the early 2000s rural in-migrants have been increasingly choosing (or planning) to stay permanently in Ouagadougou. Work opportunities, population growth, lack of land, and the Ivorian crisis are given as reasons for leaving villages as well as for staying in Ouagadougou, but the findings highlight that continued climate variability plays a major role when decisions regarding migration are made.
Source: BRILL eBooks
Parent work: Environmental Change and African Societies
Author: Jonas Østergaard Nielsen
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W2979664267