Left Behind? A Case Study of Immobile Populations in the Senegalese River Basin

The Senegalese River Basin has undergone environmental transformations in recent decades that, in combination with poor infrastructure and inadequate resources, has affected the livelihood strategies and mobility patterns of its residents. As a low-lying city near the mouth of the Senegal River, Saint-Louis is highly vulnerable to flooding. Furthermore, the vulnerability of the city can be attributed to coastal land degradation, high and increasing population density and inadequate infrastructure to manage wastewater, household waste, rain and river water (Dia 2007).

In a complex web of migration drivers that include, but are not exclusively linked to, environmental drivers (Black et al. 2011), the region has seen migration out of rural and coastal areas for urban centers and other regions in Senegal. Yet, even if migration is understood as one potential adaptation strategy, not everyone leaves his or her community of origin. In keeping with the themes of this panel, this qualitative case study, conducted in the summer of 2014, explores who stays and why. Furthermore, it asks how the migration of some affects the vulnerability of those who stay. This paper explores alternative hypotheses regarding the impact of migration on communities of origin. Echoing the migration and development debates (de Haas 2009), but expanding them to include the specificities of climate change and, more broadly, environmental transformations, I present data from in-depth interviews with the immobile – shifting the public and academic focus from migrants to those ‘left behind’. This paper explores the relationship between the movers and the stayers within family and household configurations, in which the migration of some may allow others to stay (e.g. through remittances or through the alleviation of pressure on local resources), or may deplete the capital necessary to adapt effectively to environmental changes (e.g. the ‘brain drain’).