Sexual trafficking in Nepal: constructing citizenship and livelihoods

Sexual trafficking is a priority issue for many governments and has increasingly become a focus for debate within the academy. Despite this, many aspects of sexual trafficking remain poorly understood. In this article we focus on an area that has received scant attention in the literature: the situation of trafficked women when they return home and, specifically, the livelihood opportunities available to them as they experience differing notions of citizenship. In addition to the fact that there has been very little attempt to document poverty alleviation strategies post-trafficking, within the mainstream development literature little attention has also been given to questions of sexuality and how they relate to development and poverty reduction strategies. The aim of this article, therefore, is to seek to highlight a new research agenda and to develop an interdisciplinary framework to understand what we have termed ‘the sexual politics of poverty’. Bringing together distinct literatures on sexual citizenship and sustainable livelihoods we develop our analysis of these themes through a focus on the livelihood opportunities and strategies of returnee trafficked women in South Asia, drawing on policy analysis at national and regional levels and qualitative research carried out in Nepal. In particular, the Nepal case study highlights problems with skills training for returnee women and examines the relationship between marriage and sustainable livelihood opportunities.     

Gendered livelihoods and the politics of socio-environmental identity: women's participation in conservation projects in Calakmul,Mexico

A livelihoods approach positions individuals, situated within households, as active agents within processes occurring at various scales. Environmental conservation efforts represent one such process with direct implications for local sustainable livelihoods and the gendered nature of livelihood strategies. In this article, I examine collective processes of socio-environmental identity construction as gendered sustainable livelihood strategies, articulated in and through the activities of women's agricultural organizations in communities bordering the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in rural southern Mexico. I present group histories and visual evidence from group activities – adapted from participatory rural appraisal (PRA) methodology – to highlight two important concepts. These are: (1) that gendered livelihood strategies are outcomes of negotiations within households and communities, in response to specific gendered opportunities and constraints; and (2) that gendered livelihood strategies consist of linked material and ideological aspects.     

乡村社区旅游生计代际传承的过程及影响因素——以栾川县重渡村为例

在乡村振兴背景下,旅游生计成为乡村可持续发展的重要议题,但与之相关的研究较为匮乏。文章以栾川县重渡村为案例地,通过对亲代和子代进行半结构化访谈,探讨旅游生计代际传承的过程及其主要影响因素。研究发现：(1)旅游生计的代际传承经历了亲代生计开拓、子代培养和发展、共同经营、生计传承四个阶段,并与重渡村这一乡村旅游目的地起步、培育、快速发展、规范管理的生命周期相适应。(2)文化因素、主体因素和规制压力是影响生计传承的主要原因。(3)旅游生计的代际传承关乎乡村旅游的可持续发展和乡村振兴战略的有效实施,相关问题值得进一步探索和研究。     

Negotiating Remote Borderland Access: Small‐Scale Trade on the Vietnam–China Border

This article explores the cross‐border trading networks and practices of highland residents in north‐west Vietnam. It reveals how such individuals, of highland minority and majority Kinh ethnicities, negotiate the political reality of an international border in highly pragmatic ways as they augment their livelihoods by trading commodities with inhabitants in south‐west China. We follow four particular commodities, traded across different political tiers of border crossing (each with specific rules, regulations and negotiations), by a diverse range of traders. In doing so we argue that border access is mediated by a complex and multifaceted set of social and structural components including not only state policy, but ethnically‐embedded social relations and specific geographic variables that, in turn, are engendering disparate economic opportunities.     

GHANA'S COCOA FRONTIER IN TRANSITION: THE ROLE OF MIGRATION AND LIVELIHOOD DIVERSIFICATION

Since the first commercial planting of cocoa in Ghana more than a century ago, the production of cocoa has been a key factor in the redistribution of migrants and has played a pivotal role in the development of both sending and receiving communities. This process has been acknowledged in the literature for decades. However, how migration flows have changed in response to changing livelihoods dynamics of the frontier and how this has impacted on the development of the frontier has only attracted limited attention. Based on a study of immigration to Ghana's current cocoa frontier in the Western Region, this article aims to examine how immigration and frontier dynamics in the Western region are contributing to livelihood transitions and small town development, and how this process is gradually becoming delinked from the production of cocoa. The article focuses on how migration dynamics interlink with livelihood opportunities and strategies. It is argued that migrants to the current frontier can be divided into at least four different types based on their migration, settlement and livelihood practices. Accordingly, to understand how the cocoa frontier changes as well as its continuation beyond the frontier crop, there is a need for a broader understanding of the frontier concept, and how frontier transformation interacts with migration and livelihood dynamics.     

Declining Food Security in a Philippine Oil Palm Frontier: The Changing Role of Cooperatives

The long‐held redistributive function of agricultural cooperatives — one of moral economy and poverty alleviation — has changed dramatically as they emerge as core brokers for agro‐industrial development in the so‐called ‘green economy’. This article examines the changing role of cooperatives involved in brokering oil palm production and its impact upon the food security and livelihoods of smallholders who labour in plantation regimes situated in historically uneven agrarian political economies. Findings show how, increasingly, cooperatives reinforce uneven agrarian social relations of production and exchange in which indigenous smallholders experience loss of land, poor wage labour conditions tinged with insecurity and prejudice, and mounting debt in an expanding oil palm complex. The article suggests that these changes in agrarian social relations negatively influence indigenous farmers’ food security pathways, with their access to and use of appropriate foods diminishing. It asserts that understanding the impacts of cooperatives on food security pathways requires a relational and situated analysis of livelihood change and agrarian relations in extractive frontiers.     

Ecological livelihoods of farmers and pollinators in the Himalayas: Doing critical physical geography using citizen science

In farming communities dependent on the cultivation of pollinator-dependent crops, the livelihoods of farmers are inextricably linked with pollinator health. A global pollination crisis interlinked with a crisis of food production and farmer livelihoods, exacerbated by processes of socio-environmental change, is emblematic of the Anthropocene and of the kinds of ecosocial problems with which critical physical geography (CPG) engages. We propose examining the farmer-pollinator system in the Indian Himalayas through an ecological livelihoods approach using a range of collaborative citizen science methods including bloom observations to document pollinator visits, plant phenological observations to document year-round floral resource availability, and farm diaries to document orchard management practices. An ecological livelihoods approach draws on posthumanist theory, which has remained largely disengaged with methodological questions that are of concern to CPG. Citizen science, although widely used across a range of disciplines, has seen limited engagement in CPG. After elaborating some of the opportunities and challenges that an engagement between CPG, posthumanist theory, and citizen science opens up, we propose a methodology that would be simultaneously epistemological (understanding interdependence between livelihoods of farmers and pollinators) and ontological (imagining and building worlds where farmer and pollinator habitats are recomposed).     

Labour after Land Reform: The Precarious Livelihoods of Former Farmworkers in Zimbabwe

What happens to labour when major redistributive land reform restructures a system of settler colonial agriculture? This article examines the livelihoods of former farmworkers on large‐scale commercial farms who still live in farm compounds after Zimbabwe's land reform. Through a mix of surveys and in‐depth biographical interviews, four different types of livelihood are identified, centred on differences in land access. These show how diverse, but often precarious, livelihoods are being carved out, representing the ‘fragmented classes of labour’ in a restructured agrarian economy. The analysis highlights the tensions between gaining new freedoms, notably through access to land, and being subject to new livelihood vulnerabilities. The findings are discussed in relation to wider questions about the informalization of the economy and the role of labour and employment in a post‐settler agrarian economy, where the old ‘farmworker’ label no longer applies.     

Participatory Watershed Development in India: Can it Sustain Rural Livelihoods?

The purpose of this article is to assess the impact of policy interventions through watershed development (WD) on the livelihoods of the rural communities. This is done by assessing the programme in the context of a sustainable rural livelihoods framework, that is, looking at its impact on the five types of capital assets and strategies required for the means of living. The article also examines the vulnerability and stability of these capital assets, as well as analysing which people participate in the programme and enhance their livelihoods through sharing its benefits. In the light of the analysis, it is argued that watershed development holds the potential for enhanced livelihood security even in geo‐climatic conditions where the watershed cannot bring direct irrigation benefits on a large scale. In such fragile environments, however, watershed development is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for sustaining rural livelihoods. While the focus of watershed development is primarily on strengthening the ecological base such as water bodies (including traditional tanks), grazing lands and wastelands, it should be complemented with other programmes which focus on landless poor households in order to make it pro‐poor. In the context of low rainfall regions where improvement in irrigation facilities is slow, agriculture alone cannot support the communities. Policies and programmes should aim at creating an environment for diverse livelihood activities, which are the choice of the household rather than distress activities.     

No Way Back? Adaptation and Urbanization of IDP Livelihoods in the Darfur Region of Sudan

This article explores how people in conflict zones adapt their livelihoods after they migrate to urban areas. Drawing on case studies in two towns in the Darfur region of Sudan, the authors find that livelihood systems are in transition and have undergone fundamental changes resulting from displacement and the effects of conflict on dysfunctional and failing institutions. Urban migrants’ livelihood strategies evolve in a context of insecurity, distorted markets, lack of regulation and punitive rent‐seeking regimes such as protection payments. Maladaptive livelihood strategies emerge in response to the need for food and income in the short term. New strategies also can increase societal inequities and marginalization, and over‐exploit limited natural resources. Thus the ‘new’ livelihoods cannot be considered sustainable or equitable, or even able to provide food security in the short term. Locally appropriate and innovative approaches to support livelihoods are badly needed, but it is important to monitor and evaluate their impacts on livelihood groups, local economic recovery, environment and conflict.     

旅游地可持续生计：国际研究进展评述及其对中国的启示

系统梳理总结旅游地可持续生计的国际研究进展,对我国未来旅游地可持续生计研究具有重要启示与借鉴。文章基于Web of Science检索工具,对旅游地可持续生计的相关外文文献进行归纳与评述,在辨析可持续生计概念及分析框架的基础上,从脆弱性背景、生计资本评估、生计策略转型、结构与制度及生计结果五个方面总结了旅游发展对目的地可持续生计的影响作用,并进一步从旅游地可持续生计与生态保护及文化遗产发展之间的作用关系、旅游地可持续生计的适应性与恢复力等方面全面回顾了旅游地可持续生计与社会—生态系统协同发展的相关研究。基于旅游地可持续生计的国际研究述评,文章进一步展望了未来我国旅游地可持续生计研究的重点与方向。     

Unofficial Road Building in the Amazon: Socioeconomic and Biophysical Explanations

Roads have manifold social and environmental impacts, including regional development, social conflicts and habitat fragmentation. ‘Road ecology’ has emerged as an approach to evaluate the various ecological and hydrological impacts of roads. This article aims to complement road ecology by examining the socio‐spatial processes of road building itself. Focusing on the Brazilian Amazon, a heavily‐studied context due to forest fragmentation by roads, the authors consider non‐state social actors who build ‘unofficial roads’ for the purpose of gaining access to natural resources to support livelihoods and community development. They examine four case studies of roads with distinct histories in order to explain the socio‐spatial processes behind road building in terms of profit maximization, land tenure claims, co‐operative and conflictive political ecologies, and constraints as well as opportunities afforded by the biophysical environment. The study cases illustrate the need for a multi‐pronged theoretical approach to understanding road building, and call for more attention to the role of non‐state actors in road construction.     

Does Diversification Improve Livelihoods? Pastoral Households in Xinjiang,China

Diversification is routinely promoted to improve poor rural peoples’ livelihoods. However, policy recommendations for livelihood diversification based on evidence from crop‐cultivating sedentary rural societies may not work for mobile pastoral communities, where socio‐ecological conditions predetermine livestock herding as the preferred livelihood strategy. Using survey and semi‐structured interview data collected from 159 households in the Altay and Tianshan Mountains of Xinjiang, China, this study applies cluster analysis to identify six distinct groups based on livelihood strategies: pastoralists, agropastoralists, crop farmers, wage labourers, hired herders and mixed smallholders. Although pastoralism is the least diverse of these in terms of sources of income, it is significantly more diverse in ecological dimensions such as spatial movement, land use pattern and livestock portfolio. Patterns of livelihood diversification and their relationship with household incomes indicate that pastoralism, although preferred, is unattainable for 55 per cent of households given their meagre asset endowments and the pressure of government policies toward sedentarization. The results strongly suggest that livelihood diversification does not improve welfare for pastoral households. Future development interventions should promote policies that enable households to regain flexible access to pastures and should aim to correct the imbalance of opportunities that exists in northern Xinjiang.     

Women's collective economic strategies and political transformation in rural South Africa

This article examines the economic processes and socio‐political institutions that shape women's involvement in community projects. Feminist materialism and postcolonial theory provide the framework to analyze these livelihood strategies as they are grounded in the material conditions of women's lives. The empirical study is based in a rural northern province of South Africa where colonialism and apartheid have contributed to extreme economic and social hardships. Fieldwork was conducted in Limpopo to analyze how community projects contribute to livelihood strategies. In an area where migrant remittances remain one of the main sources of income for rural households, women have increasingly engaged in collective economic strategies such as pottery making, sewing, and agricultural production. These strategies are embedded in a complex set of patriarchal institutions that reinforce unequal access to resources and have historically marginalized rural black women. Despite these barriers, findings from this study demonstrate that community projects provide the potential for economic and social empowerment, especially among rural women.     

Targeting Research for Poverty Reduction in Marginal Areas of Rural Syria

Agricultural research in marginal dry areas can contribute to reducing poverty through the development of technological, institutional and policy options for poor farmers. Such research should address diversified opportunities and development pathways. This article analyses the diversity of livelihood strategies of rural people living in the Khanasser Valley in northwestern Syria, an area that is typical of marginal drylands. It proposes an operational classification of households based on their different livelihood strategies, applying an integrated methodology within a Sustainable Livelihoods framework. Households are classified into three clusters: agriculturists, labourers and pastoralists. The article examines the diversity of livelihoods involved, and considers where and how research should be directed to have greatest impact on poverty. Given that rural households are not homogeneous but dynamic entities, with diverse assets, capabilities and opportunities, the definition of household typologies can help to target development research. The article concludes that while agriculturists benefit most, poor labourers with enough land can also gain from pro‐poor agricultural research. The poorest households with little land, and pastoralists, benefit little or only indirectly.     

War,Livelihoods and Vulnerability in Sri Lanka

As the number of de‐stabilized regions of warfare or post‐war conditions worldwide continues to grow, this article investigates how civilians survive in the context of a civil war. It analyses livelihood strategies of farmers in the war‐torn areas of Sri Lanka, using an analytical framework based on a revised form of DFID's sustainable rural livelihoods approach, placing particular attention on the institutional reproduction of household capital assets in the war economy. The author delineates a three pillar model of household livelihood strategies focusing on how households (1) cope with the increased level of risk and uncertainty; (2) adjust their economic and social household assets for economic survival; and (3) use their social and political assets as livelihood strategies. Empirical evidence comes from four case study villages in the east of Sri Lanka. Although the four case studies were very close together geographically, their livelihood outcomes differed considerably depending on the very specific local political geography. The role of social and political assets is essential: while social assets (extended family networks) were important to absorb migrants, political assets (alliances with power holders) were instrumental in enabling individuals, households or economic actors to stabilize or even expand their livelihood options and opportunities. The author concludes that civilians in conflict situations are not all victims (some may also be culprits in the political economy of warfare), and that war can be both a threat and an opportunity, often at the same time.     

Rethinking Livelihood Impacts of Biofuel Land Deals in Ghana

During the last decade, debates about the livelihood impacts of large‐scale biofuel projects have focused mainly on either employment creation or on land dispossession. The mediating role of social institutions and communal reciprocity in resource‐access manoeuvring processes have rarely been considered. This comparative study of two biofuel projects in Ghana shows that households affected by land dispossession quickly obtained new productive land areas by switching to fallow farmland or through long‐term reciprocal social networks. The livelihoods of households with members employed by the projects improved in terms of increased income and access to cultivation on project land. Not everyone, however, had the resources and ability to use social networks for job‐seeking and land access negotiation, particularly those considered to be migrants. The authors argue that a context‐specific focus on, and processual examination of, the abilities of individuals and groups to utilize social institutions to sustain their livelihoods during a project's lifetime, are crucial in analysing the impacts of biofuels land deals. Such an approach explores the various forms and uses of livelihood capitals, and shows how new configurations of social and economic relations emerging from land commercialization can reinforce local inequalities.     

‘A good wife stays home’: gendered negotiations over state agricultural programmes,upland Vietnam

Rural and livelihood studies, alongside development organisations, are stressing the importance of gender awareness in debates over food security, food crises and land tenure. Yet, within the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, these gender dynamics are frequently disregarded. In Vietnam, rice is intimately linked to the country's food security. Over the last decade, rice export levels, production methods, and local and global market prices have remained constant preoccupations for governmental and development agencies. Steadfast official approval for agricultural technologies and intensification has seen the domestic growth and importation of hybrid varieties of rice and maize seeds. Yet, the impacts of these technologies on upland ethnic minority rice producers and consumers in Vietnam have been overlooked. For these women and men, such as Hmong and Yao farmers, food security is a daily concern for their near-subsistence livelihoods. While strongly encouraged to grow these new seeds, insufficient research has examined the social realities and experiences of these upland minority groups. Moreover, how such agrarian policies and practices are being implicated in reconfiguring gender roles, relations and identities through transformations to individual and household livelihoods has been ignored. In this article, we focus on the gendered consequences of the government's hybrid rice programme for upland farmers. We reveal recent impacts on family relations, including rising intergenerational tensions across genders, and shifting responsibilities and new negotiations between young spouses. These dynamics are further complicated by household economic status, as household members access specific opportunities available to them to improve everyday food security.     

黄土高原半城镇化农民非农生计稳定性及收入差异分析

半城镇化农民是城镇化的主要对象,其非农生计的稳定性对城镇化的顺利实现具有决定性作用。半城镇化农民的受雇单位性质和从事的具体职业对其非农生计稳定性具有重要影响。在对已有研究的总结和实地调研的基础上,将半城镇化农民的非农生计按照受雇单位性质和具体职业进行分类。根据专家打分问卷和典型人群调查结果,建立了不同受雇单位性质下的具体职业稳定性等级体系,并对榆阳区、原州区和宝塔区的半城镇化农民非农生计稳定性状况进行了实证评价。结果表明,黄土高原半城镇化农民的非农生计稳定性等级普遍很低,低等级类比重都在60%以上。城镇化提高了半城镇化农民的收入水平,但不同稳定性非农生计之间的收入情况差异很大。建立城乡居民同工同酬制度和提高福利保障是推进半城镇化农民城镇化的重要举措。     

Is Land‐based Resettlement Still Appropriate for Rural People in China? A Longitudinal Study of Displacement at the Three Gorges Dam

Now complete, the effects of the Three Gorges Dam on rural livelihoods can be observed. This article presents the first longitudinal analysis of the livelihoods of two groups of rural households that were first surveyed in 2003, just after inundation, and again in 2011. It finds remarkable gains in income and social well‐being along with moderate improvements in food security and income equality. This study explores the livelihood strategies associated with these outcomes, namely land consolidation, agricultural specialization, livelihood diversification and migration. These strategies are discussed in the context of the dramatic changes that have taken place in the Three Gorges Resettlement Area over the last decade and across China more broadly. The article concludes that while non‐farm jobs are increasingly important, land remains an essential resource in the reconstruction of rural livelihoods, allowing rural households to respond to their drastically altered environment more effectively and at a pace of their own choosing.