Agency and mobility in the context of development-induced migration: the case of Three Gorges out-migrants

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recently, scholarship on migration has shifted to address people’s agency and reflexivity, particularly those of marginal groups such as refugees, older migrants and rural-urban migrants. These individuals are not passively suffering victims, but able to develop strategies to overcome the ‘frictions’ of mobility. Empirically based in data on the world’s largest-scale forced migration, resulting from the Three Gorges Dam project in China, this paper interrogates the lived experiences of those suffering as a result of development-induced migration from the perspectives of the new mobility paradigm and human agency. It examines the association between migrants’ agency and mobility, and how both are intertwined with the migrants’ resettlement experiences and life chances. The results shed light on the study of mobility and migration by addressing heterogeneity in age; we argue that engagement with both younger and older migrants offers rich potential to bridge the gap between the concepts of mobility and mooring. In practice, the paper exposes the shortcomings of current displacement and resettlement policies, which tend to overlook the well-being of older migrants, and suggests more nuanced ways of devising policies and practices in the future.