Introduction to livelihoods and migration

The movement of people will be one of the most important domestic, developmental and foreign policy issues for governments over the next decade. Understanding the issues for poor people, why and how they migrate and the implications for them (and those left at home) is important for designing appropriate development policies and programmes.

Livelihoods approaches can be used as a lens to understand migration better. They help to provide insight into the diverse characteristics of people’s livelihoods and how migration can be a key livelihood strategy. Who migrates and why, how the decision is made and the impacts on migrants themselves varies for men and women, across different generations and individual’s or household’s situations.

Livelihoods approaches assist in ensuring that development thinking is focused upon people’s everyday realities. People’s movements do not have sectoral or geographical boundaries, therefore it is important to use a tool which reflects this. Livelihoods approaches provide an integrated framework for understanding how people live and move within changing institutional, political, social, economic and environmental contexts.

It is recognised that understanding migration, and its role in people’s livelihoods, should be integral to poverty reduction policies. However institutions and policies still exist which do not encourage - or worse - hamper migration efforts. The potential benefits of migration in both origin and destination areas therefore are not always realised.

This section provides recommended reading and a regularly updated collection of relevant resources exploring how livelihoods approaches can help to understand:

• the context in which people migrate
• how migration is used as a livelihood strategy for the poor
• how such approaches can be used as a tool to aid understanding and inform poverty reduction policies.