Rural Youth Migration to Artisanal Gold Mining in Chad: Causes, Networks, and Socioeconomic Impacts in BoumKébir

Rural youth migration towards artisanal gold mining sites has expanded rapidly in Chad since the early 2010s, altering household livelihood strategies and reshaping village economies. Drawing on a mixed-methods survey conducted in Boum‑Kébir, this paper analyses (i) the structural drivers that push young people out of rural areas and pull them toward mining sites, (ii) the networked modalities through which departures are organised, financed, and sustained, and (iii) the household and local-economic impacts associated with this mobility. Quantitative questionnaires were administered to 50 young people (migrants, miners, and non-migrants) and to 30 households, complemented by semi structured interviews with administrative and community authorities, household heads, and young migrants. Findings show that migration to artisanal mining has become socially normalised: 83% of surveyed youth reported at least one migration episode to a gold site. The main drivers combine unemployment and underemployment, low income diversification, constrained access to vocational training, incomplete schooling trajectories, and growing climate-related stress on agriculture, fishing, and pastoral activities. Migration is rarely individual; it relies on structured social and economic networks involving patrons and intermediaries who organise transport and access to sites, often through informal advance-and-repayment arrangements paid in gold. While short term gains can include higher cash income and remittances, the balance of effects is predominantly negative: school dropout, exposure to severe health and safety risks (including accidents and sometimes deaths), family and marital conflict, reduced agricultural labour availability, contraction of cultivated areas and seasonal work, and weakening of local economic activities. The paper argues that youth migration to artisanal mining should be interpreted primarily as a constrained livelihood strategy under structural vulnerability rather than as free opportunity-seeking. Policy implications emphasise credible local economic alternatives, proximity-based vocational training, agricultural resilience support, and return-and-reintegration mechanisms tailored to youth.