Migration is a common and essential livelihood strategy in the risk-prone environment of Sahelian West Africa. But migration is not a passive reaction to economic and environmental forces. Patterns of movement are determined by context-specific and complex dynamics, mediated by social networks, gender relations and household structures. IDS-based research on sustainable livelihoods illustrated this in two locations in Mali: in a village in the Sahelian dryland with different and gendered migration patterns of various ethnic groups; and exceptional patterns in the Sudano-Sahelian cotton region with extensive and long-lasting engagement in small cocoa and coffee plantations in Cote d'Ivoire.Sahelian West Africa, migration, IDS-based research, Mali,
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.