Re-imagining Development for Mobile and Marginalised Peoples (ReDeMP)

The term 'mobile peoples' encompasses diverse groups, including mobile pastoralists, itinerant service-providers, Travellers, and some Romani communities. These groups differ from refugees and migrant workers in that their mobility is not a strategic response to displacement or poverty; rather, mobility is central to cultural, economic and political organisation, and a unifying value for group identity.

The problem that we address is the invisibility and marginality of mobile peoples in mainstream development, which often privileges sedentary populations by promoting static infrastructure, fixed residence, urban service provision and private ownership of land and resources.

The aim of this project is to build a cross-regional evidence base about the effects of 'sedentist' development policies on mobile peoples, and to propose models that better accommodate their livelihoods and lifestyles.