Policymakers and scholars increasingly assume migrants to be “agents of change” (Grabowska et al., 2017), “agents of development” (Sinatti & Horst, 2015) or “adaptive agents” in the face of climate change for their country or community of origin (Ransan-Cooper et al., 2015). However, we argue that this should not be argued ideologically, but should be investigated more thoroughly. Indeed, it is mostly assumed in a neo-liberal fashion, notably in the New Economics of Labour Migration theory, that the migrant-actor is a flexible, resilient individual coping in a too often depoliticised context. Very few research has been done so far in what I investigated in the migration as adaptation-research strand. The role of remittances for social resilience has been addressed (Adger et al., 2002). The literature contains many references to factors that favour social resilience, such as financial remittances, livelihood diversification, participation in decision processes, openness to innovations (through social ... : PhD-thesis written under the framework of the MIGRADAPT-project funded by Belspo-BRAIN (BR/175/A4/MIGRADAPT) ...