Abstract/Summary

This thesis explores the nexus of acculturation, translocalism and wellbeing of rural migrants in an ethnically plural society in the Kenyan Rift Valley. The study contains three interrelated essays. The first essay contests the overgeneralised representations that deny the diversity of migration outcomes. Building on the common themes of migration, "why people move" and "migrants' settlement experiences", the essay explores the diversity of rural-rural migration and settlement experiences and the extent to which migrants can settle in the Rift Valley. It uses in-depth interviews to characterise a broadly defined immigrant group such as migrants from western Kenya, based on their motivations for migration, premigration expectations, post-migration reality, and settlement trajectories. The results demonstrate how migrant characteristics and reasons for migration shape the degrees to which migrants settle in the destination localities, paying particular attention to the settlement trajectories taken by migrants who cannot permanently settle in the Rift Valley's rural milieu. The second essay brings in the analysis acculturation process for internal migrants in ethnically diverse societies; in doing so, it builds a more comprehensive picture of the dynamics of acculturation in the Rift Valley, a region in Kenya where internal migration is often a cause of hostility and deep-seated ethnic intolerance between internal migrants and their hosts. Data on the perceived relative importance of nine migrant characteristics to four acculturation preferences, namely marginalisation, separation, assimilation, and integration, is collected through a survey-based vignette experiment. The vignette experiment's data is analysed using a conditional logistic regression model. Perceptions arising from the results suggest that the factors exerting the most substantial influence on acculturation processes were levels of education and experience of ethnic discrimination. The chapter is concluded by relating the findings to policies designed to enhance the experience of acculturation in the hope of achieving more positive outcomes. The final essay analyses the nexus of translocal linkages, acculturation, and three dimensions of wellbeing: subjective, economic, and relational wellbeing, thus building on the theorisation that a more significant number of African migrants will continue to maintain ties to their rural origin provided that neither the wage level at destination nor the livelihood activities in the place of origin suffice to support an average migrant household. The chapter utilises cross-sectional data collected from a sample of 301 migrants in the Rift Valley. The marginal effects and the significance level of different translocal linkages and acculturation strategies affecting the subjective, economic and relational wellbeing were estimated using an unconstrained generalised ordered logit model. The results suggest that, although subjective, economic and relational wellbeing are affected differently by varied translocal linkages, employment status is of more substantial importance for wellbeing than translocal linkages and acculturation strategies.