Emerging research methods in environmental displacement and forced migration research

Abstract

AbstractEnvironmental displacement can be defined as forced migration occurring entirely or partly from local environmental restructuring. This includes displacement from sudden environmental events, such as storms, earthquakes, and tsunamis, or from long term changes related to the impacts of climate change, development, conservation‐related residential displacement, and environmental gentrification. Over the past decade, investigating the human impacts of displacement has become an emerging focus within displacement research. The idea of displacement is not only difficult to define but challenging to measure, due in part to a multitude of influences environmental factors have on the ability to stay put. Displacement throughout history has occurred from many factors, including social, political, environmental, and economic. Environmentally related displacement is arguably the most unpredictable form of displacement and is increasingly a problem for both the Global North and the Global South. Geographers have not always focused on these issues, although researchers are increasingly exploring this inherently spatial and temporal problem. A more thorough understanding of environmental displacement is possible by exploring available and relevant interdisciplinary research methods and methodologies used for analyses. This review focuses on literature that links both event‐driven and ongoing change‐driven displacement to environmental change to reveal the patterns across several subfields of displacement research and suggest areas for further development.