Translocal resource governance, social relations and emotional attachment: Linking translocality and feminist political ecology to explore farmer-managed irrigation systems and migration in Nepal

Abstract

Widespread male out-migration presents major challenges to the sustainability of existing collective irrigation systems. However, the ways socio-spatial changes shape collective resource governance systems remain unknown.

This paper addresses this gap by building a synthesis of translocality and feminist political ecology. Translocality studies socio-spatial interconnectedness of rural societies in the context of out-migration. FPE explores how changing gender and social relations shape resource governance. A translocal feminist political ecology framework (tFPE) allows to frame resource governance embedded within translocal social flows, and captures (i) translocal resource governance, (ii) translocal social relations, and (iii) translocal emotional attachment.

Drawing from qualitative interviews and participatory methods on two farmer-managed irrigation systems in Far Western Nepal, I illustrate the complexity, intersectionality and ambiguity of translocal social relations in collective resource governance. Translocal resource governance is shaped by changing household and labor relations marked by remittances, and translocal flows of social and human resources, ideas and knowledge, e.g. migrants’ advice via phone when and how to irrigate. Translocal social relations entail that marginalized groups, i.e. women and elderly people, provide increased labor contributions and possibly receive migrants’ support in form of advice and their networks. However, authority and power relations are sustained in resource governance by mostly upper caste men. Translocal emotional attachment to the home village by both migrants and non-migrants is ambivalent and leads them to hope for frequent returns to home, while aspirations and shame turn them away from agriculture towards earning higher incomes through migration.

The tFPE framework emphasizes the important but understudied translocal social relations and emotional attachment in water, irrigation and migration research. By linking translocality and FPE, I show how translocal resource governance, social relations and emotional attachment change everyday practices and gender, caste and labor relations in irrigation, and how we may understand the water-migration nexus.