Livelihood Trajectories in a Context of Repeated Displacement: Empirical Evidence from Rwanda

Displacement, forced migration, and resettlement in Africa have been attributed to a variety of causes and is disrupting all aspects of people’s lives, breaking social, cultural and economic networks that are critical to sustaining livelihoods. Rwanda is one of the countries in Africa with a long history of multiple displacements, and the life trajectories of many Rwandans are characterised by multiple experiences of displacement, and involuntary migration. Although many have researched the effects of displacement on people’s livelihoods from both an academic, as well as a practitioner’s viewpoint, less is known about the effects of multiple and repeated displacements over time on people’s livelihood. Instead of treating each displacement separately, this article aims to analyse the effects of repeated displacement the livelihoods and adaptive capacity of households in Rwanda. To this purpose, six months of fieldwork were conducted in the north-western region of Rwanda, collecting data from a household livelihood survey, household livelihood and mobility histories, and focus group discussions. The research highlights the importance of social and human capital as crucial to people’s resilience. However, the successive loss of natural capital in combination with changing social and economic conditions diminishes the ability of many households to keep employing these capitals to reconstruct a sustainable livelihood. Forced to become increasingly creative and flexible in their coping strategies, many households employ mobility as a survival mechanism to spread risks.