The Long-Term Socioeconomic Dynamics of Resettlement

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Economic growth depends of the development of infrastructures that allow for enterprise to thrive and innovate. Infrastructural development often significantly impacts the communities in which it takes place, and transportation and energy initiatives, for example, can require that these communities be displaced and resettled. Public confidence in these efforts depends on the mitigation of uneven development outcomes to these displaced communities. Scientists know much about the short-term dynamics of displacement and resettlement. This research would give scientists a rare opportunity to understand those dynamics over the long-term. In addition, the project would strengthen collaboration among international communities of scientists, train a graduate student in methods of scientifically-grounded and empirical data collection, and contribute data that would be of benefit to public policy experts concerned with development and resettlement. Dr. Dolores Koenig of the American University will lead a team of researchers investigating the long-term dynamics of forced displacement and resettlement resulting from large infrastructural development projects. The research would revisit a region for which there is substantial baseline data and analyses: the Manantali dam in Mali, which displaced large numbers of Senegal River Basin residents in the late 1980s. The projects asks whether the long-term impacts of forced displacement and resettlement vary depending on the access that resettled individuals and their descendants have to economic and social resources. In collaboration with researchers from the Institut des Sciences Humains in Bamako, the research team will track household samples from two studies of migrants conducted in the 1980s, and another larger sample from a study conducted in 1993-94. Date will be gathered at four different sites with varied access to resources, to test whether livelihood and other decision-making strategies differ significantly. Data on food security, socioeconomic status, social organization and kinship, health care and education access, consumption patterns, and a range of other decision-making practices will be collected through interviews and other ethnographic data collection techniques. The project will advance anthropological and other scientific understandings about economic livelihoods and their sustainability, and the social structures that sustain livelihoods and access to resources.