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Chapter 9 - Additional outcomes and

64 young women. Averagely they were around 28 at the moment of the interview. Age can affect the perception of climate change, mainly when it is a slow, gradual change, as they do not have enough time to notice heavy differences in weather patterns. Hazards with slow-onset are often ignored as there is no notion of urgency, while their impacts gradually build up and strengthen over time (Staupe-Delgado, 2019). For this reason, women could have less probability of perceiving such change.

Calculli et al. (2021) explain that young people are more concerned about climate change's impact and believe more in actions to change compared to adults. Three key sources of information were found to be responsible for their knowledge: the media, social networks, and schools. However, their study's subject, the European setting, differs significantly from the African context in important ways. In sub-Saharan Africa, women are 37% less likely than men to utilize mobile internet and 13% less likely to own a mobile phone (Gilber, 2020; Carboni, 2021).

Furthermore, livelihood is an essential component of climate change awareness. Most of the women interviewed had little direct interaction with natural resources. Some of them assisted the family with farming or knew a fisherman, but it was not their primary source of income, or they were just left to do house chores. When they reached adulthood, they typically relocated to cities and found jobs as hairdressers, resale merchants, or hotel services. Climate literacy is strongly correlated with one's knowledge of environmental change; this correlation is more pronounced among those in the agricultural or fishing industries than among the general population (Simpson et al., 2021).

Lastly, traditional gender roles hindered women from acquiring the same knowledge as men on global and political issues such as climate change. The results show that women did not always have the same freedom as men to talk about specific topics, as they were considered man problems. This concept, combined with gender inequality, as expressed in chapter 7.3, causes misinformation and misconception about issues such as climate change.

I believe it is crucial to talk about climate change awareness as it is the base to understand how women perceive and what they know about climate change broadly to understand further how climate change impacts their lives.

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9.2 Limitations

The results of this study must be seen in the context of several limitations. The theory on the future profile of migration and the relationship between climate change and domestic violence is based on the available data and the study technique chosen. As a result, they are vulnerable to biases and confounding that may have affected the estimations from the theory.

The sample available can generate limitations. First of all, the sample selected does not represent the general population. This thesis frames gender as men and women, focusing the research on cisgender women without taking into account other sexual and gender minorities. All migrant women interviewed were recipients of aid from the NGO Délégation Diocésaine des Migrations in Morocco. At the moment of the data collection, they were residing in hotspots for migration, primarily cities around Spanish borders: Nador, Al-Hoceima, Tangier, Tetouan, and Laayoune. Women living next to the European borders are usually these migrants who, at some point in their journey, had the desire to migrate to Europe. This becomes biased as it excludes the other part of the migrant population who want to settle down in Morocco. Second, due to size and nationality, the sample does not accurately reflect Sahelian women who relocated to Morocco, which lowers the generalizability of the results. The majority of women were coming from Guinea (60,87%), followed by Cameroonians (21,74%), Senegalese (13,04%), and Malians (4,35%). These percentages show the disproportion between nationalities and the exclusion of the other Sahelian countries considered (Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Gambia, and Chad). However, it appears that the results of this thesis are shared in several contexts, suggesting that the link between gender-based violence and climate change is not geographically restricted (van Daalen et al., 2022). Additionally, the survey results and the follow-up interviews with NGO workers who have experience with almost all Sahelian nationalities do allow this research to focus on the whole region.

Moreover, according to the latest data of the UNHCR on refugees and asylum seekers residing in Morocco, the countries of origin of the women respondents are representatives of the current migrant population from the Sahel, in ascending order: 2642 Guineans, 1359 Senegalese, 994 Cameroonians, 850 Malians, followed by Nigerians, Gambia, Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger (UNHCR, 2022). Important to note that this UNHCR data

66 is the combination of asylum seekers and refugees in Morocco from the Sahel region, including all gender and sex, and irregular migrants are not included.

The chosen approach does not allow a detailed examination of the Sahelian countries.

Firstly, the size of the sample for each country of origin is not enough to perform an in-depth investigation for each country of the region. Secondly, each country has a distinct socioeconomic and political structure, but this study model considers the region as one country with a single system. This decision follows the need to simplify the analysis with the data available in the literature and the primary data gathered by the Délégation Diocésaine des Migrations. On this matter, using a gender perspective would allow me to have more information and probably different results on the possible profile of migration, but this was not possible due to the lack of disaggregated national or regional data, which led to the decision to focus on the data collected by the NGO with a female sample.

Finally, the last limitation was the questions asked to the migrant population about climate change. They address climate change impact awareness as a general overview. This could not allow me to have an in-depth analysis of climate change risks perceived and known for each region or country. Therefore, it would be interesting to see future research with a clear lens on climate change impact and gender-based violence. Based on these limitations, I recommend a few ideas for future research in the following chapter.

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