Sustaining Livelihoods in Multi‐local Settings: Possible Theoretical Linkages Between Transnational Migration and Livelihood Studies

Abstract

Worldwide, an increasing number of people are diversifying their income sources through migration. This mobility in most cases involves only parts of the family migrating, and this results in people's livelihoods taking on a multi‐local dimension. Scholars have been studying this increasing mobility and multi‐locality by applying either a livelihoods approach or one of transnational migration, but they rarely combine the two. However, one major criticism of both approaches is that they do not make the link to other existing social theories and do not therefore permit any fundamental analysis of the relationship between the subject and society, the power relations within a society and the changes human mobility effects to power relations. To address this criticism, I shall discuss existing innovative research and propose Bourdieu's Theory of Practice as a means to fill this theoretical gap.

Keywords:

• multi‐local livelihoods
• transnational migration
• Bourdieu's Theory of Practice
• South Asia
• Central Asia

Acknowledgements

This research received support from the National Centre of Competence in Research North‐South (NCCR North‐South), with financial assistance from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). I thank my colleagues from the Development Study Group, University of Zurich and the Sussex Centre for Migration Research, University of Sussex, for critical comments and suggestions.