Navigating Compounding Crises: Environmental Change, violence, and youth (im)mobility in Ethiopia

This paper explores how Ethiopian youth navigate multiple, protracted, and entangled crises. While internal displacement due to conflict and drought is well documented, including the combined effects of land scarcity and environmental degradation on migration patterns, few studies have addressed how these ongoing crises reproduce vulnerability in mobility responses. For many adolescents and young adults, village life no longer provides a safe space in terms of livelihood opportunities and social protection. At the same time, established migration destinations are becoming increasingly hostile towards newcomers, leading to pushbacks and relocations to ‘home areas,’ sometimes under the pretext of protection, rehabilitation, and family reintegration. Based on a household survey, stakeholder interviews and ethnographic fieldwork among youth (aged 14-29), the paper identifies the environmental, economic, and social challenges that shape youth trajectories and everyday struggles. Fieldwork was carried out in three districts with distinct mobility traditions in Southern and Eastern Ethiopia (located, respectively, in urban and rural areas of the Gamo, Wolaita, and Fafan zones of the country), as well as in Addis Ababa. The paper illustrates how youth navigate social and humanitarian protection structures along their mobility pathways. However, these are dwindling due to resource depletion, increasing crises, and new forms of mobility control. While youth on the move continuously redefine their sense of belonging and visions for their future amid restricted options, the perpetuation of structural, social and sexual violence significantly affects their social and economic transitions in life.