Benefits of international migrations for socio-ecological resilience of rural households in the home country

Fabrice C. E. M. Demoulin, Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix, Belgium
Raul Vanegas, Université de Namur
Sabine J. F. Henry, Université de Namur

The objective of this paper is to analyse the effects of migration on the factors of ecological resilience at the household level in two Ecuadorian provinces with a focus on three communities. The attributes of resilience that are treated here are: the diversity of interrelations (with redundancy of supply chains.), the tight feedbacks loops which control ecosystem services, the modularity seen as the ability to maintain its vital activities with local resources in case of systemic shock and the connectivity as the ability to trade at larger scales to cope with local systemic shocks. We assume that the whole interactions between socio-ecological systems and the rural households are modified by the departure of at least one of its member to abroad: decrease of the workforce, remittances, transfers of knowledges. The sources of data used are the census of INEC (2011), a qualitative survey (2010) and a quantitative survey (2011). Statistical tests are realized at the household level. We observe strong links between migration and left-behinds' lifestyle. These links appear in favour of a clear differentiation of left-behinds in terms on the ecological resilience: more diversity of sources of consumption, more connectivity but also a loss of modularity and therefore less resilience to shocks at the global scale.