The power of place: Relative (im)mobility in contexts of environmental change and conflict co-occurrence in Ethiopia

Both conflict settings and accruing environmental changes have the potential to severely affect local livelihoods’ day-to-day practices, including patterns of mobility, which bears particular relevance when conflict and environmental change coincide. There are manifold examples in different regions of the world where increasingly challenging environmental conditions and incidences of conflict appear in close geographical proximity, which holds true for the case of Ethiopia, likewise. Albeit such circumstances exhibit ample potential to uproot populations from their homes, the majority of people actually remain in place and are immobile, either voluntarily or not. Others chose a mobile strategy, but fairly often such mobile ventures are characterized by prolonged periods of stillness – and thus immobility – as well, thereby illustrating the inherently relative character of (im)mobility. Ultimately, most people indeed prefer a return to the community of habitual residence as soon as feasible. Place-based identities play a seminal role for steering these pathways of relative (im)mobility and thus have to be included in corresponding analyses. Understanding these interrelations has vital policy implications for assisting populations in perilous contexts of environmental change and conflict co-occurrence and can foster our knowledge about the underlying reasons for the preponderance of immobility in such settings. The research utilizes a place-based lens in a multi-sited research design and attempts to uncover the role of place-based identities for shaping aspirations, trajectories, and emerging feedback effects of relative (im)mobility in a context where environmental change and conflict co-occur. The research is based on six months of qualitative fieldwork in two distinct rural communities in Ethiopia, located in southern Amhara and South Omo, respectively. These communities are both affected by different manifestations of environmental change and conflict, which constitutes a suitable comparative basis for this research. The study especially aims to centre the notion of relative (im)mobility and illustrates that culturally-embedded notions of place attachment, belonging, and cognitive conceptions of home and away seminally undergird the utilization of (im)mobile strategies.