Tracking Pastoralist Migration: Lessons from the Ethiopian Somali National Regional State

Watkins, Ben; Fleisher, Michael L.

doi:10.17730/humo.61.4.0g68gpe1wlpvh4rr

Cited by 11 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…In much of the Horn of Africa, including the northeast part of Ethiopia, historically viable forms of nomadic pastoralism have been undermined by successive droughts, restrictive international livestock trade policies, volatile markets, population displacement, and regional political insecurity (Watkins and Fleisher, 2002;Farah et al, 2003;Little, 2003;Markakis, 2004;Devereux, 2006;Kassahun, Snyman, and Smit, 2008). Many Somalis have diversified their livelihoods (Little, Smith, and Cellarius, 2001;Headey, Taffesse, and You, 2014).…”

Section: Methods and Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, federal relief and safety net programmes and humanitarian aid interventions funded or administered by UNICEF and Oxfam, Save the Children, and other NGOs, since approximately 2002, have made an explicit effort to prevent people from travelling long distances and sleeping in crowded, makeshift camps to receive aid. Instead, organisations have decentralised the distribution of relief commodities, trucking rations, water, and even emergency healthcare to numerous remote locations throughout affected regions (Watkins and Fleisher, ; Lautze et al, ; de Waal, Tafesse, and Carruth, ; Ministry of Health, ). In previous years families would have had to be destitute, or nearly so, to justify travelling to and settling in faraway therapeutic feeding centres or camps, but today most remote or pastoralist families are either settled year‐round in village centres or camp throughout the year in locations within a one‐day walk of rural communities such as Aysha, Degago, and Elahelay where relief commodities are distributed.…”

Section: Nomadism Revisitedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2 Loyalty to 'clan' (qabiil) and family (reer) is often cited as characteristic of Somalis and central to their personal and social identities (Lewis, 1999(Lewis, , 2004Abbink, 2003;Hagmann, 2005). Kinship and 'clan' in the Somali Region undeniably shape local targeting and distribution of international aid (Sabates-Wheeler, Lind, and Hoddinott, 2013)and access by pastoralists and semi-pastoralists to natural resources (Watkins and Fleisher, 2002). Somali societies in the Horn of Africa are, in many ways, structured by a patrilineal, patriarchal, segmentary kinship system (Abdalla, 1995;Lewis 1999;Unruh, 2006).…”

Section: Kinship Versus 'Clan'mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Kinship, nomadism, and humanitarian aid among Somalis in Ethiopia

Carruth

2017

Disasters

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This paper draws on extended ethnographic and health policy research in eastern Ethiopia to reconsider kinship and nomadism among Somalis, as both of these cultural features transform in the contexts of recurrent humanitarian crises and episodic relief operations. The emergence and importance of new patterns of travel and migration among Somalis in Ethiopia reveal significant changes in the configurations and enactments of Somali kinship, on which many Somalis' mobility depends. Conversely, an analysis of Somalis' dynamic sub-clan groupings and geographically dispersed kinship networks also highlights emergent patterns of mobility and migration that enable access to training opportunities and employment with relief organisations, as well as to distributions of humanitarian aid. Based on these findings, this paper argues that kinship and nomadism-both long central to Somalis' identities in Ethiopia-remain interdependent, coevolved, and key to their resilience and livelihoods in the face of recurrent crises and intermittent humanitarian responses.

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Section: Methods and Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Nomadism Revisitedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Kinship Versus 'Clan'mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Kinship, nomadism, and humanitarian aid among Somalis in Ethiopia

Carruth

2017

Disasters

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“…Randall (2004) promotes greater variety of data collection methods and increased triangulation in demography combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. Watkins and Fleisher (2002) draw on experiences in the Somali National Regional State of Ethiopia in the establishment of a migrant tracking system and trace out the main components of such a system. They argue that any method for collecting and interpreting information on migratory patterns must be combined with an analysis of ethnic identity, group structure, and indigenous knowledge systems and, therefore, requires interdisciplinary approaches.…”

Section: Methodological and Equipment Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Demographic and health surveillance of mobile pastoralists in Chad: integration of biometric fingerprint identification into a geographical information system

et al. 2008

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Abstract. There is a pressing need for baseline demographic and health-related data to plan, implement and evaluate health interventions in developing countries, and to monitor progress towards international development goals. However, mobile pastoralists, i.e. people who depend on a livestock production system and follow their herds as they move, remain marginalized from rural development plans and interventions. The fact that mobile people are hard to reach and stay in contact with is a plausible reason why they are underrepresented in national censuses and/or alternative sequential sample survey systems. We present a proof-of-concept of monitoring highly mobile, pastoral people by recording demographic and health-related data from 933 women and 2020 children and establishing a biometric identification system (BIS) based on the registration and identification of digital fingerprints. Although only 22 women, representing 2.4% of the total registered women, were encountered twice in the four survey rounds, the approach implemented is shown to be feasible. The BIS described here is linked to a geographical information system to facilitate the creation of the first health and demographic surveillance system in a mobile, pastoralist setting. Our ultimate goal is to implement and monitor interventions with the "one health" concept, thus integrating and improving human, animal and ecosystem health.

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“…Information concerning national migration is limited and subject to considerable uncertainties. Some estimates can nevertheless be obtained from household surveys (Watkins and Fleisher, 2002), census reports , satellite imagery (Bharti et al, 2011), and air and ground transport records (e.g. Griffitts, 1933;Tatem et al, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Migration statistics relevant for malaria transmission in Senegal derived from mobile phone data and used in an agent-based migration model

Tompkins¹,

McCreesh²

2016

Geospat Health

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One year of mobile phone location data from Senegal is analysed to determine the characteristics of journeys that result in an overnight stay, and are thus relevant for malaria transmission. Defining the home location of each person as the place of most frequent calls, it is found that approximately 60% of people who spend nights away from home have regular destinations that are repeatedly visited, although only 10% have 3 or more regular destinations. The number of journeys involving overnight stays peaks at a distance of 50 km, although roughly half of such journeys exceed 100 km. Most visits only involve a stay of one or two nights away from home, with just 4% exceeding one week. A new agent-based migration model is introduced, based on a gravity model adapted to represent overnight journeys. Each agent makes journeys involving overnight stays to either regular or random locations, with journey and destination probabilities taken from the mobile phone dataset. Preliminary simulations show that the agentbased model can approximately reproduce the patterns of migration involving overnight stays.

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Tracking Pastoralist Migration: Lessons from the Ethiopian Somali National Regional State

Cited by 11 publications

References 4 publications

Kinship, nomadism, and humanitarian aid among Somalis in Ethiopia

Kinship, nomadism, and humanitarian aid among Somalis in Ethiopia

Demographic and health surveillance of mobile pastoralists in Chad: integration of biometric fingerprint identification into a geographical information system

Migration statistics relevant for malaria transmission in Senegal derived from mobile phone data and used in an agent-based migration model

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