Disruption, not displacement: Environmental variability and temporary migration in Bangladesh

Abstract

Mass migration is one of the most concerning potential outcomes of global climate change. Recent research into environmentally induced migration suggests that relationship is much more complicated than originally posited by the ‘environmental refugee’ hypothesis. Climate change is likely to increase migration in some cases and reduce it in others, and these movements will more often be temporary and short term than permanent and long term. However, few large-sample studies have examined the evolution of temporary migration under changing environmental conditions. To address this gap, we measure the extent to which temperature, precipitation, and flooding can predict temporary migration in Matlab, Bangladesh. Our analysis incorporates high-frequency demographic surveillance data, a discrete time event history approach, and a range of sociodemographic and contextual controls. This approach reveals that migration declines immediately after flooding but quickly returns to normal. In contrast, optimal precipitation and high temperatures have sustained positive effects on temporary migration that persist over one to two year periods. Building on previous studies of long-term migration, these results challenge the common assumption that flooding, precipitation extremes and high temperatures will consistently increase temporary migration. Instead, our results are consistent with a livelihoods interpretation of environmental migration in which households draw on a range of strategies to cope with environmental variability.

Migration influenced by environmental change in Africa: A systematic review of empirical evidence

“…8 When it comes to data from surveillance systems, it has been exploited in only one of our selected case studies (the Agincourt site in South Africa: Leyk et al 2012;Hunter et al 2017). However, this data is considered to be the best for establishing causal sequence by examining the same analytical units across time and establishing the temporal order of the environmental event or change and migration (Fussell, Hunter, and Gray 2014;Call et al 2017). As long as geographic identifiers are available for households, surveillance sites offer unique opportunities to combine demographic and geographic information (Leyk et al 2012).…”

Nexus between Climate Change, Displacement and Conflict: Afghanistan Case

“…The current studies specify that a great portion of environment-induced migration is taking place within national borders. Nevertheless, there is also evidence of a growing number of environment-induced migration across international borders [11,[35][36][37].…”

Sea-level rise and human migration

“…The permanence of these migration patterns has been relatively unexplored due to the paucity of migration data. However, recent work leverages data from millions of mobile network subscribers 132 and existing longitudinal data in one survey site 209 to monitor migration responses to other SLR hazards, such as cyclone incidence and torrential flooding. Although flooding, in these contexts, clearly disrupts livelihoods, these studies contribute to a growing consensus that the observed migration patterns around extreme events are relatively short-lived 132,209-211 (Box 1).…”