Intergenerational strategies among climate-displaced families play a crucial role in facilitating adaptation and livelihood reconstruction, underscoring the need for resilience planning that acknowledges these dynamics.

The processes by which displaced families reconstruct their lives and build adaptive livelihoods in urban and peri-urban settings are poorly understood within environmental migration literature. Faced with climate-induced displacement, families in many climate-vulnerable regions are trapped in cycles of uncertainty, where short-term humanitarian aid offers temporary relief but fails to secure long-term resilience. Such fragmented responses often overlook the complex social, economic and generational dimensions of recovery. Based on empirical evidence from Bangladesh, this article underscores the importance of collaborative intergenerational livelihood strategies in the transition from short-term aid to long-term resilience, enabling evidence-based planning that prioritises family dynamics.

Displacement disrupts traditional rural livelihoods and thrusts families into unstable urban and peri-urban economies characterised by insecure housing, weak infrastructure, limited services and exploitative work.[1] While some aspire to return to their places of origin, many rebuild their lives in challenging settings, both temporarily and permanently. In the absence of structured resettlement policies, displaced families often begin rebuilding with few resources, relying on the informal economy. Marginalised people often benefit from more informal employment opportunities, but the pathways by which households navigate these sectors – who facilitates entry, which networks are mobilised and how constraints and opportunities are distributed among household members – remain underexplored. Livelihood reconstruction is frequently a collaborative enterprise where roles are negotiated and synchronised between men, women, elders and youth. Yet this is often neglected in studies that isolate individual roles from broader intergenerational dynamics. Urban informality literature also frequently aggregates displaced populations under generic ‘urban poor’ categories, precipitating a need for analytical approaches that recognise the unique circumstances of displaced people.

In precarious displacement contexts, intergenerational livelihood strategies emerge as a crucial pathway for rebuilding lives and strengthening adaptive capacities. Understanding these strategies can help fill the knowledge gaps outlined above. Intergenerational livelihood strategies involve the negotiated transfer and adaptation of knowledge, labour, networks and responsibilities within families across generations, allowing displaced families not only to cope but actively to reconstruct their livelihoods. Older adults contribute experiential expertise and continuity, while younger members foster mobility, innovation and access to emerging labour markets. Such dynamics can support long-term investments that lay the groundwork for sustainable, inclusive resilience in precarious (peri-)urban areas.

To describe how the interconnectedness of individuals and their socio-cultural and institutional networks shape adaptation capacities, we introduce the concept of ‘tethered resilience’. This reframes human mobility beyond the binary of migrating and staying and emphasises a dynamic, future-oriented process of sustaining livelihoods through shared intergenerational practices, cultural norms and institutional negotiations.

Empirical evidence from peri-urban coastal Bangladesh

By 2050, one in seven Bangladeshis may be displaced due to climate-related impacts.[2] Drawing on 70 interviews with three-generation households in peri-urban Khulna displaced by cyclones, we explore how displaced families mobilise both tradition and innovation to build tethered resilience in the absence of formal support.

Reciprocal learning to re-establish livelihoods

In the aftermath of Cyclone Gorky (1991), which devastated coastal Bangladesh, killing around 300,000 people, older generations sustained traditional skills – fishing, boat-making and subsistence farming – as vital survival strategies. These inherited practices provided continuity and cultural grounding amid disruption. A 76-year-old fisherman recalled: “We lost everything, but we knew how to make our own nets and boats. We had to move to this slum, but I didn’t know other work, so I started making nets and boats, and fishing in the Rupsha river.”

After Cyclone Sidr (2007) salinised farmlands and degraded river ecosystems, younger generations, supported by NGO training, developed these traditional livelihoods, turning to aquaculture. Intergenerational knowledge began flowing in both directions. Grandparents who once taught their children riverine fishing learned from them how to manage brackish ponds. A 38-year-old second-generation farmer reflected: “My grandfather showed me how to read the tide and weather signs traditionally; I taught him how to use the water pump and check the salinity meter. I learned this from the NGO Shushilan.”

Cyclone Aila (2009) accelerated these shifts. Younger family members migrated to Khulna for work, often in the informal sectors. “Everyone is working; otherwise, it’s difficult to manage the cost of living,” the same farmer noted, describing how his family eventually joined him in the slum. This trajectory – from traditional knowledge to reciprocal learning, migration and livelihood diversification – demonstrates how intergenerational cooperation becomes a crucial mechanism for rebuilding resilience amid structural precarity. These families do not passively endure displacement; they actively adapt through knowledge-sharing and collective effort.

Collective household efforts to sustain livelihoods

Interviewees consistently highlighted the importance of collective household strategies in sustaining livelihoods and enabling adaptation. Families acted as cohesive units, sharing labour, knowledge and decision-making across generations and genders. These strategies enhanced flexibility and diffused risk amid repeated climatic shocks. Flexible role-sharing was key: men often engaged in construction or migrated into urban centres for work, while women ran informal businesses. A 35-year-old poultry farmer said: “My husband works at a hatchery. I raise chickens, my daughter helps feed them, and my mother-in-law stays with the little ones. We all play our part. No one could survive alone.”

Intergenerational decision-making guided critical choices – debt repayment, migration or land leasing. A 25-year-old mobile vendor noted: “We sold the last cow to send my brother to Chittagong. My father and grandfather decided together.” Women were vital agents of reconstruction. A 45-year-old tea-stall owner explained: “We make pickles together – my daughter-in-law cuts; I cook; my granddaughter sells.” These practices reflect ‘resilience from below’, grounded in gendered labour, local knowledge and kin-based cooperation – though not without internal tensions and power asymmetries.[3]

Youth education as a long-term strategy

Despite sustained hardships, many families prioritised education as a key long-term strategy for improving their livelihoods and enabling mobility. This encapsulates aspirational resilience, where education is understood as a strategic investment to disrupt cycles of marginalisation.[4] Older generations, often lacking formal education, redirect scarce resources towards education, motivated by both moral and pragmatic reasoning. One grandmother (62, displaced by Cyclone Sidr) stated: “I cannot read or write, but I sent my grandson to school with the money I earned from poultry farms.” Older people take on caregiving and domestic responsibilities to support children’s education. One 17-year-old said: “My grandmother takes care of my baby brother when I go to school.”

Education is valued not only for facilitating employment but as a buffer against future climate and labour shocks. Families invest in literacy, vocational training and digital skills. A displaced fisherman explained: “I used to catch fish; now my son is learning computers. I know it’s better than going to sea.” Even when dropping out or hardship interrupts education, families adapt rather than abandon their goals. A 46-year-old mother, a housemaid, said: “My son had to stop school to work, but we kept his books. One day he’ll go back.” These stories reflect capabilities-based development, showing how intergenerational support and aspiration drive forward-looking resilience, beyond mere survival.[5]

Younger generations as economic migrants

Facing repeated climate-induced displacements, younger generations increasingly engage in seasonal or permanent economic migration to urban centres within Bangladesh as well as to the Gulf States and Malaysia. These movements reflect family-anchored livelihood strategies across multiple locations, aimed at spreading risk and diversifying income. One migrant who moved to Dhaka after Cyclone Aila stated: “I drive a rickshaw and send money home. My father looks after the land; my mother takes care of my children.” Older adults, often less mobile due to age and health, or through a desire to maintain connection to ancestral lands, remain behind, managing homesteads and providing care. As one grandmother (57, displaced after Aila) explained: “My sons work far away, but call every day. I look after the house, the cows and the grandchildren. This is my duty.” Their roles sustain household presence, continuity and possibilities for reinvestment in their locales following the return migration of their family members. Migration reconfigures, rather than dissolves, family cohesion through economic and emotional interdependence.

This intergenerational and spatial division of labour exemplifies adaptive resilience through ‘multilocal households’, where family life, economic reproduction and social ties span multiple geographies.[6] These self-organised systems, arising in the absence of institutional protection and adequate resettlement support, have drawbacks. Remittances do not address underlying issues like landlessness and environmental degradation. Migrants face exploitation and isolation. Older adults and women shoulder unpaid caring responsibilities, reinforcing inequities within the household. One woman (53), whose daughter migrated to Saudi Arabia, said: “She sends money, yes. But her son cries at night. I am tired.” Nevertheless, displaced families demonstrate agency by constructing complex, intergenerational livelihood strategies that combine mobility with rootedness, remittances with care work, and youth labour with stewardship by older adults. Migration, therefore, is not a failure to adapt but a vital part of resilience-building.

Community networks across generations

In long-term displacement contexts, community networks help households to reinforce mutual aid and social resilience. These dynamic networks evolve through intergenerational roles, shifting livelihood strategies and the digitalisation of social life. Displaced families maintain and expand social capital in both place-based and translocal forms.

Older adults serve as custodians of local trust and kinship, drawing on marriage alliances, religious institutions, village associations and cooperative labour groups. These embedded networks become critical in post-disaster recovery, particularly where formal aid is delayed or absent. One older adult (65) recalled: “After Cyclone Sidr, no one from the government came quickly. We shared rice and water from house to house. It was my generation who knew who needed help and who could give.” Such insights show how older people function as local ‘connective tissue’, facilitating culturally appropriate mutual aid.[7]

While older adults nurture tight-knit internal community bonds, young people cultivate external linkages, brokering institutional and digital knowledge through NGOs, digital platforms, social media and migrant networks. They connect with external actors to enhance access to aid, services, loans and policy programmes. One 28-year-old woman displaced after Cyclone Aila explained: “I joined a training programme run by [the NGO] BRAC. Now I’m in a WhatsApp group with women from various districts. We share info about jobs and loans. My uncle helps me read the documents.” This multi-generational, dual-layered networking expands household capacity to navigate complex institutional landscapes.

Intergenerational networks also create tensions, however. Displacement reshapes hierarchies and can lead to intra-family land disputes and competition for NGO resources. Generational divides in trust and communication can create disconnects: older people may distrust digital tools, while youth see traditional structures as outdated. One 27-year-old man stated: “My grandfather trusts only our mosque committee. But I applied for training through Facebook. We argue about which is better.”

Ultimately, community networks are critical forms of social infrastructure that support both daily survival and long-term adaptation. They not only mobilise resources but preserve collective identity, emotional well-being and political voice.

Supporting ‘tethered resilience’

Our findings reveal that livelihood resilience is not an individual trait but, as noted, a ‘tethered’ process. Displaced peri-urban households rely extensively on intergenerational cooperation, with reciprocal learning, education, translocal livelihoods, community networks and digital literacy as pivotal axes.

These multi-generational dynamics are often sidelined in adaptation models. Dominant climate policies continue to treat displaced populations as atomised beneficiaries, ignoring the embedded roles of age, gender and kinship in shaping resilience. Our findings invite a shift from top-down, technocratic models toward frameworks for climate adaptation that recognise the intergenerational and collective dimensions of livelihood reconstruction under protracted displacement and ecological uncertainty.

We argue for a reframing of adaptation policy along four lines to strengthen tethered resilience, focusing on bridging formal systems with lived community practices:

1. Recognise households as interdependent systems, where members contribute complementary forms of capital – knowledge, labour, care and mobility – to sustain and adapt livelihoods.
2. Adopt age- and gender-sensitive approaches, including digital training for youth, protection and health services for women and girls and recognition of older people as custodians of local knowledge.
3. Support informal systems – mutual aid, rotating credit groups and community-led initiatives – through legal recognition and financial integration.
4. Move beyond emergency responses to cultivate long-term resilience grounded in evolving intergenerational processes, including investments in housing, health and diversified livelihoods.

 

While this study is grounded in the peri-urban context of Bangladesh, its implications extend globally as climate-induced displacement becomes more widespread. Lessons from peri-urban Khulna, where grassroots adaptation emerges from necessity, show that resilience is not just material, but also relational – based on knowledge sharing, reciprocity, informal networks and cultural and intergenerational continuity. By investing in such tethered resilience as a central component of adaptation planning, climate policy can become more inclusive, just and effective.

Bishawjit Mallick
Associate Professor Climate Change and International Development Studies, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
b.mallick@uu.nl

Oishi Rani Saha
Research Assistant, Economics Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna, Bangladesh
oishiranisaha@gmail.com

Rup Priodarshini
Individual Consultant of Population and Environment Discourse, United Kingdom
rup.priodarshini@yahoo.co.uk

[1] Salem M, et al (2025) ‘Managing the urban-rural transition: A review of approaches and policies for peri-urban land use’, Journal of Urban Management, in press

[2] Khan A A (2019) ‘Social and legal barriers to improving human rights of climate change displaced people in Bangladesh’, Journal of Interrupted Studies, Vol 2 (1): 103-117

[3] Kirby N (2025) ‘Strengthening community resilience through participation – a conceptual exploration’, Environmental Sociology, 1-16

[4] Appadurai A (2008) ‘The capacity to aspire: Culture and the terms of recognition’. In Held D and Moore H L (eds) Cultural politics in a global age: Uncertainty, solidarity and innovation, Oneworld

[5] Sen A (1988) ‘Freedom of choice: concept and content’, European Economic Review, Vol 32 (2-3): 269-94

[6] Adger W N, Barnett J, Heath S and Jarillo S (2022) ‘Climate change affects multiple dimensions of well-being through impacts, information and policy responses’, Nature Human Behaviour, Vol 6: 1465–73

[7] Lee J, et al (2022) ‘Social capital building interventions and self-reported post-disaster recovery in Ofunato, Japan’. Scientific reports, Vol 12 (1): 10274

READ THE FULL ISSUE