Migration as a Livelihood Strategy

As you have seen in the first unit of this lesson there are many reasons that can bring people to migrate. In many cases (though not always) migration constitutes a livelihood strategy for people from rural as well as urban areas (see among others: de Haan et al. (2002)). People often migrate to avoid risks and to increase the ability to resist shocks and stresses ("vulnerability context"). In that sense migration is seen as an enhancement strategy. Enhancement strategies are mainly intended to put households and their members in a better position and increase its wellbeing and wealth as opposed to coping strategies that refer to reactions to contingencies and processes of impoverishment (Thieme 2007).

Click on the illustration in the right hand column to see how migration can be conceptualized as a livelihood strategy when relying on the sustainable livelihoods approach, which can be summarised in a livelihoods framework:

When people migrate as an enhancement strategy, they want to improve the assets or capitals, which they need in order to make their livelihoods. For this, they already need to have some assets such as financial capital (in order to pay the basic transportation costs), human capital (one must be healthy to migrate) and social capital (social networks in order to get the financial capital, or to have information on the opportunities to migrate and support in the destination place). The latter is particularly important in the case of transnational migration.