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In the last decades, a growing scholarship has outlined the crucial role of social networks as a source of resilience. However, with regard to the Global South, the role of social networks for the resilience of rural communities remains an under-researched and underconceptualized issue, because research remains scattered between different strands and has rarely been integrated from a resilience perspective. To provide common ground for the exchange between disciplines and to identify steps towards a more comprehensive social network perspective on the resilience of rural communities in the Global South, we present a systematic review of contemporary case studies from three strands of research: (i) natural resource management, (ii) agricultural innovation, and (iii) social support. Although studies in each strand have their own particular strengths and weaknesses in addressing aspects of the resilience of rural communities in the Global South, they all share a static view of the outcomes of social networks, tend to emphasize structure over agency, and neglect spatial dimensions of social relations. To address these challenges, we propose a translocal social network perspective on resilience that views rural communities as being embedded in social networks that connect people and facilitate the flow of resources, information, and knowledge between places.

Over the last decade, a growing body of literature has emerged which is concerned with the question of what form a promising concept of social resilience might take. In this article we argue that social resilience has the potential to be crafted into a coherent analytic framework that can build on scientific knowledge from the established concept of social vulnerability, and offer a fresh perspective on today's challenges of global change. Based on a critical review of recently published literature on the issue, we propose to define social resilience as being comprised of three dimensions: 1. Coping capacities —the ability of social actors to cope with and overcome all kinds of adversities; 2. Adaptive capacities — their ability to learn from past experiences and adjust themselves to future challenges in their everyday lives; 3. Transformative capacities — their ability to craft sets of institutions that foster individual welfare and sustainable societal robustness towards future crises. Viewed in this way, the search for ways to build social resilience — especially in the livelihoods of the poor and marginalized — is revealed to be not only a technical, but also a political issue. Innerhalb der vergangenen Dekade ist eine Vielzahl von Artikeln erschienen, die sich mit der Frage beschäftigen, wie ein der Forschung dienliches Konzept von sozialer Resilienz aussehen könnte. Wir argumentieren, dass ein in sich kohärentes Forschungsprogramm erstellt werden kann, welches nicht nur in der Lage ist, Ergebnisse aus der Verwundbarkeitsforschung aufzunehmen, sondern gleichsam neue Wege für die Erforschung aktueller Problemlagen aufzuzeigen vermag. Vor dem Hintergrund der gegenwärtigen Literaturlage schlagen wir eine Definition sozialer Resilienz vor, welche drei Dimensionen umfasst: 1. Die Fähigkeit sozialer Akteure zur Bewältigung von Krisen. 2. Das Vermögen, aus vergangenen Erfahrungen zu lernen und sich an zukünftige Entwicklungen anzupassen. 3. Die Befähigung zur sozialen und ökologischen Transformation, welche das individuelle Wohlergehen fördern und einer nachhaltigen gesellschaftlichen Stärkung im Umgang mit zukünftigen Krisen dienlich sind. In dieser Betrachtungsweise erscheint die Suche nach Resilienz — insbesondere für die Lebenshaltung der Armen und Ausgegrenzten — nicht als technische, sondern primär als politische Aufgabe.

BACKGROUND Despite an increase in scholarly and policy interest regarding the impacts of environmental change on migration, empirical knowledge in the field remains varied, patchy, and limited. Generalised discourse on environmental migration frequently oversimplifies the complex channels through which environmental change influences the migration process. OBJECTIVE This paper aims to systematise the existing empirical evidence on migration influenced by environmental change with a focus on Africa, the continent most vulnerable to climate change. METHODS We select 53 qualitative and quantitative studies on the influence of environmental change on migration from the comprehensive Climig database and systematically analyse the literature considering the multidimensional drivers of migration. RESULTS Environmental change influences migration in Africa in an indirect way by affecting other drivers of migration, including sociodemographic, economic, and political factors. How and in what direction environmental change influences migration depends on socioeconomic and geographical contexts, demographic characteristics, and the type and duration of migration. CONCLUSIONS The contextually contingent nature of migration-environment relationships prevents us from drawing a universal conclusion, whether environmental change will increase or suppress migration in Africa. However, this study unravels the complex interactions between the nature and duration of the environmental pressure, the livelihood of the populations, the role of kinship ties and the role of demographic differentials on migration response. CONTRIBUTION The review provides an initial systematic and comprehensive summary of empirical evidence on the environmental drivers of migration in Africa. It also discusses the implications of the scale, materials, and methods used in the 53 studies.

Linkages between environmental change and migration can be reciprocal: declining environmental conditions can trigger people to leave a place, while the movement of people to certain places can have implications for the natural environment and may enhance conflict risks. Although a growing body of research has enriched our knowledge on these two main directions of influence, including the role of conflict, research on dynamic linkages between environmental out-migration and degradation through in-migration is virtually lacking. To fill this gap, we have developed a conceptual framework and have outlined specific pathways of environmental change, migration, immobility, and resource use conflicts. We focus on reciprocal linkages to understand the mechanisms through which environmental change contributes to out-migration and how in-migration, in turn, may contribute to changes in the environment and resource use conflicts. The framework and corresponding pathways are based on our empirical research on resource-dependent rural communities in Ethiopia, which we have embedded in a broader Global South perspective. We identified the following four specific pathways of change: first, environmental change increases migration needs, primarily through declining agricultural production and food insecurity, with financial means and migration experiences being key factors enabling migration. Second, environmental change increases migration needs but hampers migration abilities through care responsibilities and lack of financial resources. This lack inhibits migration and leads to involuntary immobility. Third, migration to rural areas triggers land use change and deforestation through livelihood transitions and adopted land management in receiving areas. Forth, blaming migrants for perceived resource degradation contributes to resource disputes and violence between migrants and the local population. We conclude with future directions for identifying and understanding reciprocal environment-migration linkages and priorities for research.

Forest decline and degradation are particularly high in the tropics and pose a risk to those who depend on forest resources. The in-migration of smallholders to forest frontiers can fuel transitions of livelihoods and land and resource use. However, the conditions under which in-migration contributes to such transitions remain poorly understood. With this study, we aim to investigate the influence of in-migration, together with other non-demographic factors, on the livelihoods of local and migrant communities. As a case study, we chose the Guraferda district, a hotspot of rural in-migration and forest loss in southwest Ethiopia, where the forest-based local population experienced a rapid transition to agriculture-based livelihoods. We used 224 household surveys in three different kebeles (smallest administrative unit in Ethiopia) and applied descriptive and analytical statistics to understand how and why the forest activities of local and migrant groups have changed since a major resettlement program was launched in 2003. The findings were contextualized by local expert knowledge to assess forest loss and the role of in-migration in livelihood transitions and deforestation. Forest cover in Guraferda declined partially because of the in-migration of smallholders from agricultural-based systems, and insecure land tenure, but also considerably because of the expansion of commercial agriculture. With the decline in forest, the local population adopted migrants’ agricultural practices, a trend further encouraged by agricultural policies and barriers to participation in forest management for locals. Our study challenges simplified assumptions in in-migration–deforestation debates by showing that governmental policies, land tenure, and natural-resource access are mediating the impact of migration on livelihood transitions and deforestation. We conclude that securing land tenure and equal access to natural resources for frontier residents and promoting a mix of agricultural and forest livelihood activities can reduce adverse impacts in in-migration areas.

Southeast Asian countries host significant numbers of forcibly displaced populations, both within countries and across borders. This brief review paper provides a basic overview on recent forced migration research in Southeast Asia for the period 2013 to 2018. To this end, a keyword search with two predefined sets of search terms was carried out in the Web of Science database in September 2018. The identified research literature corpus was then analyzed regarding persons of concern, study site(s) (country/ies) as well as main drivers of migration. The results show that the major part of studies focuses on refugees and asylum seekers in the region's main host countries, namely Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. This correspondence between current research trends and the distribution of refugees and asylum seekers in Southeast Asia could, however, not be identified for internally displaced persons (IDPs). Although Southeast Asian countries account for a substantial share of worldwide IDPs, only a very limited number of identified studies focus on this group of persons of concern.

In the debate on climate change and migration, there is growing recognition that human mobilities can function as a means of adaptation to climate change. While much research has focused on financial remittances for adaptation, less attention has been paid to social remittances. We adopt an im/mobilities perspective to examine the pathways of social remittances related to agricultural practices in times of environmental stress. By doing so, we push the conceptualization of social remittance implementation as more than a discrete step, illuminating it instead as a process with meandering speeds and rhythms. Based on intensive qualitative research carried out between July 2021 and November 2022 in Skoura M’Daz, a small town in Morocco, we analyze factors mobilizing and immobilizing the implementation of social remittances. We focus on incorporated social remittances, particularly new ideas or knowledge related to new agricultural practices that could potentially be enacted, like constructing drip irrigation systems and digging wells. Mobilizing factors like personal wealth and access to digital information contributed to their implementation, while immobilizing factors prolonged, delayed, or stopped a remittance flow altogether. Implementation processes also featured stop-and-go, ebbing and flowing rhythms of im/mobilization, where agents made plans, worked around constraints, or put goals on backburners, resulting in, what we name, latent social remittances. This temporal dimension provides opportunities for unexpected transformations and outcomes beyond initial formation that should be taken into consideration when studying the relationships among mobilities, social remittances, and climate adaptation.

In the debates over environmental impacts on migration, migration as adaptation has been acknowledged as a potential risk management strategy based on risk spreading and mutual insurance of people living spatially apart: migrants and family members that are left behind stay connected through a combination of financial and social remittances, joint decision-making and mutual commitment. Conceptualizing migration as adaptation through the lens of translocal livelihood systems enables us to identify the differentiated vulnerabilities of households and communities. COVID-19 and the restrictions on public life and mobility imposed by governments worldwide constituted a complex set of challenges for translocal systems and strategies, especially in the Global South. Focusing on examples, we highlight two points: first, the COVID-19 crisis shows the limits of migration and translocal livelihoods for coping with, and adapting to, climate and environmental risks. Second, as these restrictions hit on a systemic level and affect places of destination as well as origin, the crisis reveals specific vulnerabilities of the translocal livelihood systems themselves. Based on the translocal livelihoods approach, we formulate insights and recommendations for policies that move beyond the narrow, short-term focus on the support of migrant populations alone and address the longer-term root causes of the vulnerabilities in translocal livelihoods systems.

The nexus between migration dynamics and environmental change has drawn the attention of many researchers in the recent past. While the majority of studies focus on the impact of the environment on migration decisions, less emphasis has been placed on the feedback effect of migration on the environment in rural sending areas. This article provides a critical review of this relationship by focusing on the rich literature on rural-urban migration of smallholder households in Kenya and its effects on rural environments. The article argues that there are distinct relations between migration, agricultural change and the environment. These are mediated in varying degrees by flows of remittances, loss of labor, socioeconomic stratification, gender dynamics, and cultural factors. Overly generalizing assumptions about these relations, however, fail to grasp their complexity. We propose employing a translocal perspective to enrich future analysis and enhance the understanding of migration-environmental interactions.