“I can migrate, but why should I?”—voluntary non-migration despite creeping environmental risks

Abstract

‘Environmental non-migration’ refers to the spatial continuity of an individual’s residence at the same place despite environmental risk. Moreover, this is a largely under-researched topic, especially within the climate change adaptation discourse, but is increasingly coming to the attention of scientists and policymakers for sustainable adaptation planning. So far, there exists hardly any conceptual and methodical guidelines to study environmental non-migration. Considering this research gap, this paper explores environmental non-migration based on the notion that factors of livelihood resilience can partly explain the decision to non-migration. Here, livelihood resilience is seen as an outcome of the interactions between societal and environmental conditions of an individual household. These conditions inform the decisions (to stay or to migrate) taken in case of a hazard or creeping environmental change. Their influence generalises the spectrum of migration decision-making (to stay or to migrate), which is conceptualised by four broad outcomes categorised into voluntary and involuntary, and non-migrants and migrants. This analytical concept is operationalised through an empirical example in southwest coastal Bangladesh. The results suggest that the Livelihood Resilience Index (LRI) relates to the voluntary nature of migration decisions once they are made. Still, only a household’s resilience cannot predict the decisions the household makes to stay or migrate. The paper concludes that the proposed analytical concept, with its exemplary factors, maybe an initial means to holistically explore migration decisions in the context of natural hazards and climate and environmental change. However, environmental non-migration remains complex and multi-faceted, and its assessment requires deeper examination at various scales.