Reconceiving migration through the study of pastoral mobility
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By Natasha Maru, PASTRES (Pastoralism, Uncertainty, Resilience) project. Given at EUI on 10 April 2019. https://steps-centre.org/event/the-future-of-the-world-is-mobile-what-can-we-learn-from-pastoralists/
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Reconceiving migration through the study of pastoral mobility
- 1. Reconceiving migration through the study of pastoral mobility Natasha Maru PASTRES PhD candidate Institute of Development Studies Presentation at the Schuman Centre’s Seminar Series | April 10, 2019 | Florence, Italy
- 2. The mobile world Presentation at the Schuman Centre’s Seminar Series | April 10, 2019 | Florence, Italy
- 4. The new mobilities paradigm Presentation at the Schuman Centre’s Seminar Series | April 10, 2019 | Florence, Italy
- 5. Presentation at the Schuman Centre’s Seminar Series | April 10, 2019 | Florence, Italy Concepts + Methods MigrationPastoral mobility
- 6. Why do people migrate? - Migration is principally economic, resulting from the unequal distribution of resources - Rational-choice migrant making individualistic decisions - Migration decision-making occurring at a singular moment in time Presentation at the Schuman Centre’s Seminar Series | April 10, 2019 | Florence, Italy
- 7. Drivers of migration • Economic, social, geographic, political, cultural • Temporality and proximity • Extent and strength • Location Presentation at the Schuman Centre’s Seminar Series | April 10, 2019 | Florence, Italy
- 8. Rabari on the road Presentation at the Schuman Centre’s Seminar Series | April 10, 2019 | Florence, Italy
- 9. Research question: Why does pastoral mobility persist? How does it respond to changing circumstances?
- 10. Reconceiving mobility • Embodied web of relationships • Reflexive • Embedded in political and social history Presentation at the Schuman Centre’s Seminar Series | April 10, 2019 | Florence, Italy
- 11. Reconceiving mobility • Relational • Immobile infrastructures Presentation at the Schuman Centre’s Seminar Series | April 10, 2019 | Florence, Italy
- 12. Reconceiving mobility • Physical movement • Discourse and imagination • Emotion and affect Land – Labour - Livestock Conception Perception Experience Presentation at the Schuman Centre’s Seminar Series | April 10, 2019 | Florence, Italy
- 13. What methods could be useful? Ethnography? Mobile methods? Participatory mapping? Network analysis? Multi-media methods? Presentation at the Schuman Centre’s Seminar Series | April 10, 2019 | Florence, Italy
- 14. Thank you! Contact: n.maru@ids.ac.uk Presentation at the Schuman Centre’s Seminar Series | April 10, 2019 | Florence, Italy
Hinweis der Redaktion
- The world is increasingly mobile - whether people, money, institutions, images, etc, and whether tangibly or in imagination. And this increasingly mobile world comes with its own uncertainties. Even the examples of uncertainty presented by Ian before us are part of mobile systems - Whether it is the banking system with money transferred transnationally at the click of a button, whether it is the global spread of epidemics, or critical infrastructures such as electric grids through which power passes, or airport infrastructures that manage high risk aerial movement.
- Human mobility especially through migration has been termed as the defining feature of this century – whether it is forced displacement, economic or labour migration or skilled migration. Human beings are more mobile than ever before causing increasing insecurity in the world reflected through the Brexit discourse, through Trump’s wall and Salvini’s policies on migration. A new understanding of mobility is needed to not only understand the aspirations and capacities of migrants, but also to better inform policies for both international and internal migration.
- The increasingly mobile world has led to the development of new ways of thinking about and studying mobility that have as their focus not just the social fact of movement, but also the processes, practices, sensations and affects it generates. Although not as new as some of its proponents may claim – the new mobilities paradigm with scholars such as John Urry, Tim Cresswell, Mimi Sheller, Monika Buscher, Noel Salazar and others provides a new lens with which one may explore the mobile world.
- I want to bring these approaches down to the study of human mobility and discuss how my study of pastoral mobility may contribute to a new conceptual and methodological framework, a new nomadic metaphysics, that may better inform our understanding of migration dynamics.
- Migration, both domestic and transnational, is not a new phenomena just as pastoral mobility is not new but the context within which both these movements now take place is rapidly shifting. Labour migration and pastoral mobility have historically been deemed to follow a similar logic – of course scholarship has moved forward in the study of both, but just to trace some basic similarities: - migration is principally economic, that it results from unequal distribution of resources and migrants intentionally set out to address this for themselves, their families or their communities. Pastoral mobility is a livelihood strategy to overcome unequal distribution of resources resulting from variable rainfall. -the rational-choice migrant as a decision maker who chooses to migrate in a relatively autonomous or individualistic way (Pastoralists serve as individual rational choice makers that tend to follow profit-maximizing principles - 'Hardin's thesis'- leading to the tragedy of the commons) -Migration 'decision-making' is presumed to occur at a singular moment in time, or within a relatively short time horizon prior to departure (Collins, 2018) (Pastoralists decide on mobility decisions based on specific weather conditions determined at the time of movement)
- Further to these basic characteristics, scholarship has been able to attribute migration to certain drivers, certain economic, geographic, political and social factors that affect in different ways and at different times. They may differ in extent, strength, duration – they may be forces that pull people towards certain places, push people out of certain places, they may be economic and social structures that connect origin and destination areas and those that generate the aspirations and motivations to move. These understandings have influenced migration policies across the world especially in the context of transnational mobility that look at the movement undertaken by people from country of origin to host country. But the mobilities paradigm asks us to look beyond such deterministic models of migration and to show movement as a more iterative process. Pastoral mobility, as it slowly unfolds over a geographic area that is easy to follow, provides a good opportunity to observe these processes closely, see how pastoralism adapts and evolves at granular scale and bring these insights at the system level
- These understandings have influenced migration policies across the world especially in the context of transnational mobility that look at the movement undertaken by people from country of origin to host country. But the mobilities paradigm asks us to look beyond such deterministic models of migration and to show movement as a more iterative process. Pastoral mobility, as it slowly unfolds over a geographic area that is easy to follow, provides a good opportunity to observe these processes closely, see how pastoralism adapts and evolves at granular scale and bring these insights at the system level By studying the mobility of the Rabari pastoralists in India through the mobilities approach - I want to explore pastoral mobility as a curated experience rather than merely a livelihood strategy. An experience that is embedded within its own politics and history, is negotiated and as Eliott and Urry say - presses deeply upon the self, its everyday routines, scripts of selfhood and textures of emotion. The Rabari or Raika pastoralists in India are the largest nomadic group in the country, and inhabit the dryland regions in Western India - near the border with Pakistan. Unlike romantic visions of pastoralists in vast open pastures, the Rabari must navigate across a patchwork of tenure types and where resources, including water have been privatized, enclosed and are strictly regulated. They exercise their concurrent and overlapping rights by negotiating with a range of actors, in an extremely adverse hyperindustrial policy environment.
- In such a shifting political economy, the question that my thesis asks is: why does pastoralist mobility continue to persist? How does it evolve in response to changing circumstances? In researching to answer these questions, my hypothesis is that mobility is far more complex and iterative than simply an economic and livelihood strategy, and in fact the simple availability of resources in certain areas is no longer the primary determinant of mobility decisions. I believe that understanding the everyday politics of mediating relationships may help to connect how pastoralists feel, act and express with their logics of mobility.
- To respond to my questions I will deploy new conceptions from the mobilities paradigm. From the mobilities turn, we have Mobility as a constellation of relationships - mobility is not just resulting from a series of discrete drivers or factors pressing down upon individuals - but rather is an embodied web of relationships that interact with each other and the migrating body. This web of relationships not only influence mobility but in turn is influenced by it as well. This web of relationships is embedded in its own social and political history - so the flow of people has its own gradations, topographies of capital accumulation – underlying grid of power that determines the migrants’ position
- The migration path chosen by an individual or community is reflective of a particular interaction of the web of relationships and only exists in relation to other path options – multi-local migrations – multiple temporalities of mobility – seen as a constant unfolding and state of flux rather than discrete movements Mobility and immobility are two sides of the same coin and must be studied together. Mobility relies on moorings or immobile infrastructures - whether physical or social. This could be social networks, or certain mediating roles, whether fixed and assigned paths, or critical infrastructures.
- Mobility exists not only tangibly in physical movement and perception, but also in conception, discursively and in imagination, in desire and aspiration. Mobility is an embodied experience - it involves gendered, racialized, aged bodies that encounter other bodies, objects, and the physical world multisensuously, generating emotions and forms of pleasure and pain.
- While a robust theoretical frame for reconceiving mobility has been built – this epistemological advancement must be accompanied by methodological advancement. This has also been the concern of the mobilities turn who have worked to develop mobile methods Through my study with the Rabari pastoralists, I hope to refine these concepts and methods. I recognize that it may be difficult to study all of the dimensions of mobility listed above but I believe it is important to acknowledge the multidimensional character of mobility even as one may choose to study only certain aspects. There is a danger that one may retreat into studying specific aspects as discrete and disengaged phenomena and therefore the attempt must be to have these dimensions speak to one another and the need to develop this overarching conceptual frame. Through this study I also hope to bring the study of pastoral mobility out of its niche and locate it within larger conversations about movement, mobility and migration.