Geographies of rural households’ out-migration in the lower Mekong countries

Lower Mekong countries are at the forefront of tackling vulnerability to interlocking dynamics of climate change and upstream hydropower development, as well as the political economy of agrarian transitions at local and national scales. These processes expose detrimental impacts to rural households, who have already been entrenched in persistent poverty, while struggling with such compounding challenges to sustain their everyday livelihoods. Studies demonstrate various forms of place-based adaptation, but a discursive understanding of what constitutes out-migration and decisions taken by the rural poor is lacking. By critically analysing empirical migration studies undertaken in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam (with a specific focus on the Vietnamese Mekong Delta), as well as reports from international organisations, we argue that rural households’ out-migration is mainly characterised by a rural-urban pattern and shaped by multi-scalar exogenous and endogenous drivers, including push-pull, risk aversion, risk-taking endeavours, and willingness to change. These dynamics underscore rural households’ intents to avert socio-economic and environmental risks in origin areas, while also deliberately engaging in risk-taking endeavours to seek better livelihoods in destination areas. This essay exemplifies how out-migration has come as a key adaptation strategy exerted by rural households in dealing with in situ livelihood precarity in the lower Mekong countries and climate- and development-affected societies in the Global South.