Speeds and rhythms of social remittance implementation for climate adaptation in Skoura M’Daz, Morocco

Abstract

In the debate on climate change and migration, there is growing recognition that human mobilities can function as a means of adaptation to climate change. While much research has focused on financial remittances for adaptation, less attention has been paid to social remittances. We adopt an im/mobilities perspective to examine the pathways of social remittances related to agricultural practices in times of environmental stress. By doing so, we push the conceptualization of social remittance implementation as more than a discrete step, illuminating it instead as a process with meandering speeds and rhythms. Based on intensive qualitative research carried out between July 2021 and November 2022 in Skoura M’Daz, a small town in Morocco, we analyze factors mobilizing and immobilizing the implementation of social remittances. We focus on incorporated social remittances, particularly new ideas or knowledge related to new agricultural practices that could potentially be enacted, like constructing drip irrigation systems and digging wells. Mobilizing factors like personal wealth and access to digital information contributed to their implementation, while immobilizing factors prolonged, delayed, or stopped a remittance flow altogether. Implementation processes also featured stop-and-go, ebbing and flowing rhythms of im/mobilization, where agents made plans, worked around constraints, or put goals on backburners, resulting in, what we name, latent social remittances. This temporal dimension provides opportunities for unexpected transformations and outcomes beyond initial formation that should be taken into consideration when studying the relationships among mobilities, social remittances, and climate adaptation.