Rural Youth Out-Migration in Kurram Agency, Pakistan: De-peasantization or Cyclical Migration?

The last two decades has been the most violent in the history of Pakistan gener-ally and more specifically tribal areas in the North West Pakistan on border with Afghanistan. The continuous unrest in the region has transformed and is trans-forming livelihoods of the people living there. Agriculture is the major source of income but insecurity, low earning, labour shortage and aspirations for better living out village is creating disinterest among rural youth. This research paper studies contestations of rural youth migration, stay in the context of conflict in Kurram. For that purpose, research focuses on three aspects of rural youth in-volvement in farming in context of war in a small village in Kurram Agency, FATA. The study explores various factors pushing youth from farming and tying it to rural area. The paper argues that there are various forms of livelihood strat-egies been carried out by combining farm and non-farm activities. Which indi-cates that people are leaving farming but at the same time they are also staying in farming. It is evident that youth has no interest in farming and even those who are farming are in term of waithood, where youth shift roles inside house-hold, cropping patterns are being changed to decrease drudgery but despite of all these strategies and transformation for the moment rural youth in Bilyamin, Kurram are maintaining farming as only alternative.