title: Assessing the role of place attachment in environmentally induced resettlement: a case study of the Shire river valley in Malawi
Creators: name: Ntapara, Babra Mary
Publisher: name: University of Reading
Year: 2022

description: This thesis examines the meaning of home and how it leads to different movement dynamics 
during environmentally induced resettlement in Malawi. Specifically, this study explores how 
resettlement has emerged as a disaster response measure in Malawi, how resettlement is 
designed and executed as a result, and what the role of place attachment is in determining 
where resettlers go and what they do after being resettled.
Using a mixed method approach, data were generated using a semi-structured questionnaire, 
key informant interviews, in-depth interviews, participatory photography, trend analysis and 
participatory mapping. The quantitative data were analysed using the Statistical Package for 
Social Sciences (SPSS), whilst content analysis and Nvivo-software were used for the 
qualitative data. These data were collected from four resettlement sites in two administrative 
districts of Nsanje and Chikwawa. The sites were called Medrum village, Mwalija village, 
Mpomba GVH and T/A Nyachikadza. 
The first major finding of this thesis is that, although resettlement in Nsanje and Chikwawa is
characterised as voluntary by the government, a top-down approach was used by them to 
induce people to move upland. Indeed, the majority of resettlers prefer to maintain their 
ancestors’ lowland due to the availability of fertile soil in the river valley that facilitates their 
farming goals, unlike the upland soil that was described as unproductive. 
The second key finding of this study is that resettlement disrupted the resettlers’ place 
attachment, which explains why resettlers’ preferred to maintain their ancestors’ land. This 
preference prompted the resettlers to either refuse to resettle, move back and forth between 
the high or low areas, or return to the lowlands after the resettlement programme has been 
completed. This thesis established that the resettlers’ movements were motivated by their 
need to maintain their place attachment, which was portrayed by their narratives of place 
dependency, social bonding and place identity. In particular, the resettlement design did not 
factor in the resettlers’ place dependency needs, with many farmers struggling to grow crops 
in the uplands, especially those farmers that had been resettled very far from their original 
land. Thirdly, this study found that social bonding plays a crucial role in influencing people’s 
decisions to resettle. Evidence presented in this thesis indicates that resettlement disrupted 
the resettlers’ social networks and neighbouring ties that were reported to be central to their 
everyday lives. Findings also reveal that the resettlers aim to preserve their place identity, 
but that this has been downplayed by government. The resettlers’ identity was manifested 
by their desire to live in proximity to their ancestors’ land, maintaining their culture and social 
norms. Therefore, it is deduced that resettlement impinged on their place identity as the 
resettlers were not able to identity with their new settlements.
Therefore, this study recommends that resettlement should take a holistic approach whereby 
resettlement is not only driven by consideration of resettlers’ safety but also considers the 
place constructs that theory and empirical evidence shows are key to successful resettlement 
programmes. Giving resettlers opportunities to plan their own resettlement helps to ensure 
that there is mutual agreement on how meanings of home can be feasibly incorporated into 
post-disaster resettlement programmes.