Paper short abstract:

This paper presents a qualitative comparative analysis to understand the diversity of the ‘impact’ of labour out-migration on rural change better by identifying the combinations of causes that explain its diversity in the 19 regions studied, to contribute to regionally specific policy.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presenmts a qualitative comparative analytical approach to understand the obsrved diversity of the ‘impact’ of labour out-migration on rural change better by identifying the combinations of causes that explain its diversity in the 19 regions. The paper’s approach combines the notion of configurational causality of established QCA methods, a combinatorial approach that emphasises multiple causation, with a focus on causes as ‘generative mechanisms’ as used in realist evaluation methods.

First, a selective overview of the empirical and conceptual literature establishes our starting point that the impact of large-scale labour out-migration on rural change in sending regions is diverse and that existing approaches have difficulty explaining that diversity satisfactorily. We discuss, in section 3, the qualitative comparative analysis approach used to make sense of that diversity. Sections 4, 5 and 6 are the three steps of the analysis. Section 4 categorises the ’outcomes’ for the 19 regions studies, that is the role that labour out-migration plays in rural change, section 5 discusses the ‘mechanisms and conditions’ that generate these outcomes, while finally section 6 presents the ‘configurations’ of causes that explain the diversity of outcomes. We conclude in section 7 by summarising the main findings and discussing their policy relevance.

The policy relevance of the paper’s analysis lies in the promise that it can analytically ground more regionally specific policies and programmes to enhance the (positive) contribution of labour out-migration to rural change, against the currently often dominating standardised, and not particularly effective, approaches at national and international levels.