Qualitative study reveals how climate precarity shapes rural-to-urban mobility among young smallholder farmers, highlighting structural drivers that reproduce socioeconomic inequality.
Key Points
To examine how climate precarity intersects with land tenure, political systems, and labor markets to shape the mobility of rural youth.
Conducted qualitative interviews with policymakers, academic experts, and young male smallholder farmers in the Sidama Region of southern Ethiopia.
Analyzed the interactions among three structural dimensions: land tenure governance, ethnic federalist politics, and urban informal labor markets.
Demonstrated that climate impacts primarily generate precarity—the compounding interaction of labor instability, social reproduction stress, and environmental risk—rather than straightforward out-migration.
Revealed that mobility and precarity are mutually constitutive, circulating socioeconomic insecurity between rural and urban spaces while structural barriers restrict safe travel and equitable employment.