During this project the fellow, Matthieu Salpeteur, was hosted at the CEFE laboratory (CNRS, Montpellier, France), and worked in close collaboration with Doyle McKey, the project supervisor, and other members of the lab. The project was terminated early (when the fellow obtained a permanent research position) and lasted 15 months in total.
During the preparatory phase (June-October 2016), the fellow designed the data collection protocol in relation with the project objectives and received training in related research fields, such as conceptual approaches to human-environment interactions and movement ecology. The methodology devised included the GPS tracking of herds, land-use classification from satellite images, daily phone interviews to record interactions between the shepherds and farmers, and in-depth interviews with shepherds to understand the decision-making process over the course of migration.
Data collection was then implemented in collaboration with the Gujarat Institute for Desert Ecology, an Indian research institution specialized in ecology and land-use analysis. Four migrating groups willing to participate in the study were included in the sample, and the migration of these groups was surveyed during the full migration cycle, covering three main phases (winter, summer and monsoon), from November 2016 to August 2017. Regular interviews were conducted with the shepherds to record the sociopolitical context of the migration and the logics of decision-making during migration. Data processing started as soon as the first data sets were available, with the aim of analyzing each data set on its own and in articulating the different types of data in a joint analysis.
