Quality of Life and Migration Technical Aspects and Results of Social Modeling

The semi-arid North-East of Brazil is one of the most significant problem regions in the world. Social structures became established in the last century under difficult natural, especially climatic, conditions. These structures do not seem to be very suitable facing appropriate strategies to social and ecological crises in this region. Coping mechanisms developed in this spectrum of problematic natural and social living conditions which are highly questionable in their quality as individual and social solution concepts. This refers first of all to migration activities which no longer being traditional compensatory migration or seasonal labor migration. This article gives an overview of the main activities of the project Socio-cultural Analyses (SOLAM), especially about (a) the methods to identify the socio-economic and socio-cultural options and restrictions for the improvement of the quality of life, and (b) their integration into a model of the social dynamics of adaptive behavior by integrated modeling. The model results are presented for the present situation and for different scenarios up to the year 2025. The focus of concern of 'Socio-cultural Analyses' is the description and explanation of the interaction between quality of life and adaptive behavior in the rural areas of North-East Brazil, especially for the federal states Piauí and Ceará. Due to a problem-oriented approach, the set of action strategies to be explained is restricted to migration and direct alternatives, like self-organized enhancement of local life conditions. The superior objective is to evaluate possible future development plans of rural regions in the study area based on scenarios and simulation model results on the basis of differences in quality of life. The main focus of the recent project period was the development of a space-related migration model based on differences in quality of life and spatial distances. This included (i) the formulation of an integrative concept for quality of life, (ii) the outline of functional relationships, and (iii) interviewing householders in the research area.