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Paper short abstract:

Migration from the climate-affected Sundarabans is typically short term. Cities offer unstable, low wage informal work. Rural communities remain emotionally tied to a possible future well-being based in the village

Paper long abstract:

The Indian Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove ecosystem, is a collection of several hundred islands, in southern West Bengal. Surrounding the Reserve Forests, where human habitation is disallowed, is the Transition Zone of villages, along the major tidal rivers. Here long standing economic backwardness now intermesh in complex ways, with climate related environmental changes, both gradual and episodic, threatening the existence of some of the islands, and challenging rural households with the erosion of land and water as means of livelihoods. 75% of households send at least one person out to earn, typically an adult male who engages in seasonal, short term work in agriculture, construction or services.

A pilot study in two villages ( Godkhali and Satyanarainpur) revealed parallel but overlapping trajectories of households which stay and cope, individuals who migrate and return. The paper highlights vulnerabilities of households at the point of origin and individuals at the point of destination. What impels migrants to return? This research shows that the city had no place in their imagination, they dreamt of a future where their village might provide them work, schools and hospitals. Migrants’ access to only informal, low-wage urban work calls into question India’s current model of urbanisation and development. At the same time, villagers remain emotionally and materially tied to a breath taking coastal landscape, where tranquillity and threat are interlaced, invoking concepts like ma-er khamar ( mother’s’s granary) and jomi jolojyanto ( the living land) to describe a space that somehow sustains them.