Double displacement – Interactions between resettlement, environmental change and migration

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Migration is an expression of shifting human-environment relations in response to changing risks and opportunities. Under modernist development regimes, the perceived environmental qualities of a locality have been used to justify state-led initiatives to encourage people to settle in particular places, in order to exploit favourable conditions and resources. In more recent decades, as the environmental consequences of modernist development intensify, environmental risks increasingly form part of the justification for state-led resettlement schemes to protect people or, purportedly, to protect the environment from people. The success of such resettlement schemes, in terms of contributing to improved livelihood outcomes for affected people, is greatly undermined however by the lack of large-scale support required to recover livelihoods. This paper looks at the complex relations between environmental change, resettlement and migration. It is based on research of two resettlement schemes in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam undertaken in the 2000s, that sought to reduce people’s exposure to environment risks. Subsequent environmental deterioration in the resettlement areas, together with key agrarian changes, has undermined the capacity of people to recover from the disruption of resettlement and adapt their livelihoods to new risks and opportunities, resulting in increased outmigration. We argue that whilst large-scale, state-led resettlement schemes are often designed in response to life-threatening risks, without supporting the capacity of people to adapt to the everyday risks of deteriorating environmental conditions, reduced access to resources and limited employment opportunities, then livelihood precarity will persist resulting in a kind of double displacement. As such the increased out-migration from resettlement sites should not be seen as indicative of new adaptation pathways but, due to the largely involuntary nature of such migration, it should rather be understood as an expression of the limits of adaptation in the new localities. The underestimation of the level of support required for people to recover and adapt following resettlement reflects the technocratic way in which resettlement is approached and the failure to appreciate the scale of disruption associated with the cumulative and combined effect of slow-onset environmental deterioration.