Rural-Urban Migration and resilience Implications on the Maasai Households’ in North- Eastern Tanzania

Abstract

Most migrants’ sending households in rural areas are characterised with a number of threats. Academic literature has focused on impact of migration on households’ resilience in terms of how migration replenishes or depletes household capitals, putting little emphasis on how it enhances or depletes households’ capacities to cope with households’ threats. This paper explores the implications of rural-urban migration on the Maasai pastoralists’ households in North-Eastern Tanzania. The objectives are to examine the effect of migration on the households’ capacities to cope with households’ threats. The paper utilises the multi-layered social resilience framework supported by qualitative approach. It draws on in-depth interviews with 30 households’ members, 15 key respondents, two focus group discussions and secondary data. The data was analysed by using content analysis of the transcriptions using MAXQDA 10 [VERBI Software, Marburg, Germany] given its strong ability in handling qualitative data. The findings indicate that youth out-migration facilitated households to develop reactive and proactive capacities to cope with the households’ threats and in some instances it eroded the households’ capacities to cope with the threats. These findings present both theoretical and policy implications. Theoretically, it suggests that resilience approach based on the threat yields more robust picture of migration implications on households’ resilience. Policy wise, it provides researchers and policy-makers with solution-oriented way of thinking about groups faced with threats particularly the indigenous groups like the Maasai pastoralists.