Climate Migration Research Articles

Ebb and Flow: The Prospects and Constraints of Climate Migrants

ABSTRACT Understanding why people choose to adapt or emigrate when facing slow-onset climate events is central to the design and implementation of policy addressing displacement spurred by climate change, especially climate-refugee programs. In this article, we leverage extensive field interviews and a novel survey in the Federated States of Micronesia, a country at high risk of environmental degradation but whose citizens have carte blanche access to the United States. We find that despite a general awareness of environmental risks, these play a minor role in migration decision making. Instead, other factors like work, health, and family obligations take precedence.

Climate, Conflict, and Context: Reevaluating Americans’ Support for Refugees

ABSTRACT As more people are displaced by climate change, public acceptance of migrants is an increasingly relevant geographical and political issue. How willing are Americans to accept climate migrants and how does this support compare to others who are fleeing conflict? We conducted a nationally representative survey experiment (N=1,027) with prompts that varied the context of refugee resettlement, including a control condition without context, those displaced by global warming, refugees from Ukraine, and refugees from Afghanistan. Respondents expressed marginally lower willingness to admit climate migrants and significantly higher willingness to admit Ukrainian refugees. These differences were amplified by partisanship, religion, and race. These results suggest that some migrants experience a more welcoming public than others and highlight a challenge for those who are made vulnerable by climate change.

Climate migration management? Contrasting international policy approaches with evidence from Ghana

ABSTRACT Donors and international organizations are seeking to manage migration out of climate-affected areas through local climate change adaptation and resilience-building. This article assesses the prominence of such approaches, considers their possible efficacy through an empirical case, identifies weaknesses, and offers alternatives. First, we identify and discuss international policy approaches seeking to shape climate-related mobility, drawing on document review of bilateral donor and international organizations’ policy and strategy documents regarding adaptation and climate-related migration. Then, we consider the efficacy of in place, or ‘in situ’, approaches that emphasize adaptation to limit mobility in practice. This is through a case-based analysis of dams and irrigation in the dry savannah zone of Northern Ghana, where poverty and outmigration are the highest in the country, and climate change severely undermines rural livelihoods. Donor-supported national efforts in this region explicitly link in situ adaptation and resilience-building with aims to limit outmigration. In addition to extensive background research including historical analysis, satellite and climate data analysis and a household survey (n = 403), this particular case analysis is based on individual and key informant interviews (n = 16 and 8, respectively), focus group discussions (n = 6) and document and policy review from Ghana, with focus on the Upper West Region. We document significant limitations broadly relevant to in situ approaches: they are unlikely to address diverse climate impacts as well as non-climatic factors shaping migration, and they will likely struggle to accommodate highly differentiated needs, preferences and mobility patterns within populations. Conversely, we find that in situ approaches seeking to reduce climate-related outmigration dominate among donor policies – often over focus on poverty reduction or development outcomes. These findings call for rethinking of donor and domestic policies that seek to limit outmigration through adaptation and resilience building. Rather, there is a need for development – and choice-oriented approaches that constructively integrate local adaptation and migration options for improved development outcomes.

Calculating ‘climate migrants’: An emerging topology of power

On what basis can it be said that climate change contributes to human migration? What are we to make of new statistical models used to construct the relationship between these two epochal phenomena? This article proposes Collier’s conception of topology to characterize the novel politics of gravity modelling, a technique increasingly used to calculate numeric estimates of ‘climate migrants’. These models do not simply signify a revival or repetition of political sovereignty, nor an affirmation of biopower, but a novel recalibration of power arising in response to the climate crisis. This recalibration signals the early stages of a new topology of power organized around intuitive calculation. To make this claim, the article draws on recent discussions in geography on the relationship between calculation, number and the political to first situate the models within contemporary critical scholarship on climate change and migration. It then examines the models’ statistical logics, in particular how intuition, inference and the incalculable shape three facets of this emerging topology: the correlation of Earth science data with population-level economic data; the calculation of mobile populations; and the unique spatiality at stake in gravity modelling.

Food Security Status and Associated Drivers Among Climate Migrant Households in Bangladesh: Insight From Urban Informal Settlements

ABSTRACTClimate migrants and their food accessibility are a pressing issue in Bangladesh that has not been adequately addressed in previous studies. This research aimed to examine the food security status and its associated drivers among climate migrant households' residing in urban informal settlements in Khulna city. This study was conducted in three selected wards (12, 21, and 31) known for their urban informal settlements and high concentrations of climate migrants. Data were collected on socioeconomic, demographic, COVID‐19 impacts, and the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale using an interview schedule. Descriptive (mean, standard deviation, and percentage) and inferential statistics (chi‐square test and binary logit model) were used to analyze the data. The study found a large portion of households to be food insecure (83.3%). Several socio‐demographic and economic issues, including the household head's education, occupation, and health, the number of working members, monthly income, savings, debt, and access to a safety net, were identified as significant drivers of food insecurity. Moreover, COVID‐19 impacts, considering loss of employment, income, and savings, shortages of daily needs, and price hikes on food items, were identified as the significant contributors to food insecurity. Responsible stakeholders may utilize the outcomes of this study to combat food insecurity and hunger among climate migrants residing in urban informal settlements through necessary policy measures.

Too rare to dare? Leveraging household surveys to boost research on climate migration

Abstract Nationally representative household surveys are a potential data source that could shed light on the climate–migration nexus. However, they are rarely designed specifically to measure or study migration and often lack the necessary features to identify connections with climate change. This paper offers a critical reflection on current challenges faced by multi-topic household surveys in responding to these needs while also highlighting the many opportunities embedded in their use. Using the Living Standards Measurement Study household survey programme of the World Bank as an example, this paper proposes a methodological agenda and practical guidance to address data gaps and advance research on climate migration.

Climate change and forced migration

Abstract Climate change is increasingly recognized as a significant driver of migration patterns worldwide. As the global temperatures rise, extreme weather events become more frequent, leading to disruptions in livelihoods displacement, and migration. Every day, climate change becomes a more urgent economic, social and existential threat to countries and their people. Climate changes are becoming more and more evident every day, a factor that undoubtedly directly or indirectly affects the displacement of populations. This article provides answers to basic questions starting with how, and where climate change triggers migration and displacement, the second question is if we have a definition for the climate migration, or climate refugee, can they have protection from the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the last analysis is the inadequacy of the protection afforded by international law and European Union law and the Albania Legislation to individuals who leave their country of origin for reasons related to environmental issues. The methodology used to answer the questions of this paper includes desk review on existing literature, legal texts, reports from international organizations, legal framework regulating climate migration rights and the decision of the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) regarding the “climate refugees”, the case of Teitiota v New Zealand.

Beyond environmental determinism? Analysing studies on environmental migration in the Greater Mekong Subregion and the Ganges‐Brahmaputra Delta Region

AbstractCurrent studies often present environmental and climate migration in three ways: in an environmentally deterministic way, as an adaptation strategy or as a ‘wicked’ phenomenon. This bibliometric and thematic analysis analysed 147 studies from January 2015 until August 2020 on environmental migration in the Greater Mekong Subregion and the Ganges‐Brahmaputra Delta Region (India and Bangladesh) to determine to what extent dominant discourses on environmental migration and mobilities have moved away from environmental determinism. Results of this study suggest that most analysed studies, which clearly framed environmental migration, tend to remain rather environmentally deterministic. Further, the spatial level of analysis in the studies, whether it was local or non‐local, did not correspond to different theoretical and conceptual approaches to environmental migration. While 17.0% of the studies presented environmental migration as a form of adaptation, relevant discussions on the concepts of resilience, vulnerability and adaptation were largely lacking. This is problematic as recent global studies on environmental migration are increasingly adopting the adaptation paradigm. Additionally, relatively few studies have adopted more critical or pluralistic approaches to human mobility, climate change and adaptation. Lastly, studies on Bangladesh were more often presenting climate change as a primary driver of migration than studies in other localities within the study region.

IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON MIGRATION PROCESSES IN CENTRAL ASIA

The article discusses the problems of climate change, water scarcity, desertification and how these problems affect migration processes in Kazakhstan and the Central Asian region. The main objective of the study is to analyze the conceptual problems of climate migration in Central Asia, as well as to identify their key aspects and the possibility of mitigating the effects of global warming. The main objectives of the study include analyzing scientific research, legislative acts and international studies related to new aspects of migration, reviewing environmental factors of migration processes, studying the relationship between climate change and migration. The study used methods of qualitative analysis of expert opinions and methods of substantive analysis of scientific publications. The use of social forecasting methods made it possible to identify the scientific novelty that global warming is an important factor in migration processes. The results of the study allow for a better understanding of the challenges under consideration, which have a global context. But given their degree of influence in Central Asia in general and Kazakhstan in particular, global warming may have a more negative effect. The interrelation of these challenges on migration processes, security and development of Kazakhstan and Central Asian countries is considered. In addition, possible approaches to reduce the effect of global warming are analyzed, as well as the need to increase research in this direction.

A Multi-Hazard Approach to Climate Migration: Testing the Intersection of Climate Hazards, Population Change, and Location Desirability from 2000 to 2020

Climate change intensifies the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, profoundly altering demographic landscapes globally and within the United States. This study investigates their impact on migration patterns, using propensity score matching and LASSO techniques within a larger regression modeling framework. Here, we analyze historical population trends in relation to climate risk and exposure metrics for various hazards. Our findings reveal nuanced patterns of climate-induced population change, including “risky growth” areas where economic opportunities mitigate climate risks, sustaining growth in the face of observed exposure; “tipping point” areas where the amenities are slowly giving way to the disamenity of escalating hazards; and “Climate abandonment” areas experiencing exacerbated out-migration from climate risks, compounded by other out-migration market factors. Even within a single county, these patterns vary significantly, underscoring the importance of localized analyses. Projecting population impacts due to climate risk to 2055, flood risks are projected to impact the largest percentage of areas (82.6%), followed by heatwaves (47.4%), drought (46.6%), wildfires (32.7%), wildfire smoke (21.7%), and tropical cyclone winds (11.1%). The results underscore the importance of understanding hyperlocal patterns of risk and change in order to better forecast future patterns.

Global sustainable development programs: Challenges to the achievement of the goals

In this interview the Head of the Chair of Sociology of Public Administration of the School of Sociology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Vladimir P. Vasiliev, shares his assessments of the results and significance of the UN climate Conference held in November-December 2023 in the UAE (Dubai). He examines the current dynamics of the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement, the key provisions of the reports of the World Health Organization and the International Energy Agency, and focuses on the discussions that unfolded at the conference on the use of fossil fuels and the transition to renewable energy sources. It is noted that the process of implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is currently facing a number of serious obstacles, both economic and socio-political in nature. Meanwhile, failure to implement the SDGs is fraught with a sharp aggravation of the problems of global inequality, food security and climate migration, especially dangerous for the most vulnerable groups of the population. It is noted that under these conditions, the Russian Federation is pursuing a long-term climate policy aimed at achieving a balance between anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and their absorption, in a way that is consistent with national interests and priorities of socio-economic development. Hopefully, scientists from Lomonosov Moscow State University will be able to contribute both to improving the environmental policy of the Russian Federation and to defining the global climate agenda. And for this, in turn, it is important to develop and strengthen the dialogue between the leading scientific schools of Moscow State University.

Rural migrants in urban centers: Sources of vulnerability or agents of adaptive capacity?

Research on climate migration is increasingly analyzing not only the role of climate as a migration driver but also migration's adaptive and maladaptive outcomes. However, despite broad recognition that climate-related migration is overwhelmingly rural-to-urban, migration's effects on the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of the receiving urban destinations, many of which struggle to adapt to climate change, have received scant attention. To begin addressing this gap, this study examines how urban planners and policymakers in flood-prone Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's main migration destination and Africa's fastest-growing metropolis, perceive these effects. To this end, we utilize semi-structured interviews to examine three interrelated dimensions: migration's effects on flooding, the potential responses to ameliorate its adverse effects, and migrants' capabilities and the ways the city can harness those capabilities to reduce flooding.The results show that most planners and policymakers view migration as mainly exacerbating flooding yet also perceive migrants as possessing the potential to contribute to urban adaptation. This potential encompasses aspects recognizing migrants' agency, such as adaptation knowledge and planning skills, alongside ‘physical-economic’ elements linked with the use of migrants as labor for maintaining drainage channels and their contribution to enlarging the city's tax base, which may assist in funding flood-prevention infrastructure. However, the results also point to Dar es Salaam's inaction to exploit this potential, accompanied by a perceived lack of responsibility for advancing adaptation. We conclude by highlighting the importance of adopting a proactive approach to mapping and harnessing migrants' capabilities, ultimately contingent on cities' willingness to assume this responsibility.

Exploring antecedents to climate migration: sense of place, fear and worry, and experience

Exploring antecedents to climate migration: sense of place, fear and worry, and experience

On climate migration and environmental safety

Abstract The article explores the growing trend of climate migration, driven by the increase of people displaced due to climate change, natural disasters, and environmental factors, as reported by the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration. The paper delves into the impact of climate change on migration, highlighting the primary causes and characteristics of climate migration. Furthermore the article discuses the potential for regulating climate migration through international law, emphasizing the urgent need to enhance resilience to the consequences of climate change, particularly in the context of countries’ efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

A comparison of the large-scale gene expression patterns in summer and fall migratory Pantala flavescens (Fabricius) in northern China.

Pantala flavescens (Fabricius) is the most well-known seasonal migratory insect. This research focused on the molecular response of P. flavescens migration in summer and fall. A total of 17,810 assembled unigenes were obtained and 624 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in summer migration compared to fall migration. A number of DEGs, including cpr49Ae, itm2b, chitinase, cpr11B, laccase2, nd5, vtg2 and so on, had previously been reported to be involved in cold- and high-temperature resistance. Functional enrichment analysis showed three pathways 'that antibacterial humoral response, response to bacterial, and lipid transporter activity' were significantly enriched in summer migration while that six pathways 'structural constituent of cuticle, chitin binding, mitochondrion, propanoate metabolism, citrate cycle, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy' were significantly enriched in fall migration. These results will provide a valuable baseline for further understanding of the molecular mechanisms of insect adaptation to different climate migrations.

Parables for planetary crisis: storytelling and multispecies migration in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island

Throughout his oeuvre, Amitav Ghosh deals with storytelling and migration. Exploring legacies of empire and entanglements between the human and non-human world, his writing is driven by an ethical imperative to excavate “forgotten” stories, and, especially in his later texts, to find new forms of storytelling suited to capture pasts, presents, and futures shaped by a growing sense of planetary crisis. Gun Island (2019), a generic mix of personal quest narrative, thriller, romance, and folk tale, depicts a world disrupted by different forms of multispecies migration. Linking the Indian subcontinent, the US, and Europe, it chronicles voluntary and forced journeys of humans and animals between the Global North and South, intertwining refugee and climate crises in the Mediterranean and Bangladesh with the morally charged legend of the gun merchant, a seventeenth-century world traveller. The text brings current and historical links between migration and climate change, which are comparatively rarely treated in literary fiction, into sharp focus. As this essay argues, it highlights specifically the need to broaden the notion of migration literature and its subgenres to include both human and animal migration and the impact of globalization and current realities of climate change. Exploring genre and poetics in Gun Island, this essay reads the novel against the broader aesthetic and cultural-historical arguments made in Ghosh’s The Great Derangement (2016) and The Nutmeg’s Curse (2021). To explore Ghosh’s poetics, which fuse everyday realism with the uncanny, the improbable, and the mythical, this essay also draws on Thom van Dooren and Deborah Bird Rose’s notions of “ethography”. It argues that Gun Island, as a multispecies climate migration novel, responds to the author’s call for a rediscovery of storytelling beyond Western-style realism or SF, as a means to capture human and non-human subjectivities and to undo demarcations between rationality and spirituality.

The Climate Migration Crisis: Socio-Economic Impacts and International Policy Responsibilities in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands

The Climate Migration Crisis: Socio-Economic Impacts and International Policy Responsibilities in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands

Climate Refugees in India: Seeking Security between Disaster Diplomacy and Strategic Ambiguity

Abstract Among the 100 million refugees and displaced persons in 2022, the category of “climate refugees” has become more salient, yet countries still do not know how to handle it. Two aspects of climate refugees also remain understudied; how climate refugees are perceived, since they are viewed through the dual lenses of climate risks and migratory flows and how these perceptions impact policies. Climate refugees are thus doubly impacted by the spill-over effect of securitization processes in the fields of climate change and immigration. This paper analyzes how climate- and migration-security legislation in a resource-constrained nation conceptualizes climate refugees, and how their diverse conceptual categories spill over into policymaking and create a mutually beneficial and humanitarian approach for host and migrant populations. This paper uses India as a case study based on its historical practice of refugee protection despite significant resource constraints, high risk of inbound climate refugees, participation in key global agreements, and domestic discourse over climate and immigration securitization. Using policy analysis and expert interviews, this study demonstrates that India successfully exemplifies a broadly humanitarian climate mobility regime in the South Asian region through relocations, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief operations, and ad hoc legal protection. Despite crucial structural limitations, India illustrates a democratic global south template implicitly recognizing migrants’ vulnerability to climate change and attempts to minimize risk, with potential for replication in other developing and developed nations. This normative policy framework, notwithstanding its limitations, presents an alternative to the threat-centric and unsustainable securitization of climate migration practiced in the Global North.

Social Protections and Climate Migration: Service Navigation among Puerto Ricans Displaced by Hurricane Maria.

As climate change continues to displace greater numbers of people, transnational ties are important sources of social protection for climate migrants. Migrants assemble unique configurations of formal and informal social protections depending on the resources available within their sending and receiving communities. However, the specific constellations of social protections that climate migrants use following disaster and displacement remain underexamined. Authors conducted semistructured interviews with Puerto Ricans who migrated in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria (N = 41) and used qualitative content analysis to trace the assemblages of formal and informal social protections used to navigate the resettlement process. Results suggest that informal support from migrants' transnational ties was instrumental in successfully making use of formal sources of support, including federal emergency relief programs, to leave the island and resettle on the U.S. mainland. This reliance on informal social protections often strained participants' informal networks and raised questions of equity for people internally displaced by climate change. These findings highlight the need for a more equitable and effective linkage of climate migrants with public resources.

Multi-level factors influencing climate migration willingness among small-scale farmers

Introduction: Climate change is a pressing global challenge impacting agriculture and rural communities. This study investigates the willingness to migrate against climate change among small-scale farmers and explores the associated socioeconomic and sociodemographic factors.Method: A sample of 296 small-scale farmers was randomly selected, and data were collected through face-to-face interviews. A logistic regression model was used to assess the association of multi-level factors with willingness to climate migration.Results: The results showed that different dimensions of adaptation strategies are inversely associated with willingness to migrate in response to climate change. In contrast, human capital was directly associated with the desire to migrate. Also, improving financial capital was indirectly associated with farmers’ willingness to migrate to the rural area. The study also found that education level plays a key role in increasing the probability of being willing to relocate in response to climate change. Specifically, a 1-year increase in education level was associated with a 4.2% increase in the likelihood of being willing to migrate.Discussion: Therefore, providing financial support for sustainable farming practices to alleviate the economic challenges faced by small-scale farmers, and implementing targeted capacity-building programs to enhance farmers’ adaptive capacity and promote sustainable agricultural development can be suggested. Furthermore, improving farmers’ specialized knowledge regarding the various consequences of climate migration, in conjunction with their general education, can help control and manage their migration.