Empirical research on international environmental migration: a systematic review

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of a systematic review of scholarly publications that report empirical findings from studies of environmentally-related international migration. There exists a small, but growing accumulation of empirical studies that consider environmentally-linked migration that spans international borders. These studies provide useful evidence for scholars and policymakers in understanding how environmental factors interact with political, economic and social factors to influence migration behavior and outcomes that are specific to international movements of people, in highlighting promising future research directions, and in raising important considerations for international policymaking. Our review identifies countries of migrant origin and destination that have so far been the subject of empirical research, the environmental factors believed to have influenced these migrations, the interactions of environmental and non-environmental factors as well as the role of context in influencing migration behavior, and the types of methods used by researchers. In reporting our findings, we identify the strengths and challenges associated with the main empirical approaches, highlight significant gaps and future opportunities for empirical work, and contribute to advancing understanding of environmental influences on international migration more generally. Specifically, we propose an exploratory framework to take into account the role of context in shaping environmental migration across borders, including the dynamic and complex interactions between environmental and non-environmental factors at a range of scales.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11111-014-0210-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Climate Change, Agriculture and Migration: A Survey

“…A growing number of research works have been investigating the consequences on migration of short-, medium-, and long-term climate variability using different econometric approaches [49]. Several conflicting results can be found in the literature highlighting how climate-induced migration is a complex phenomenon, which depends on a variety of specific socio-economic conditions [50].…”

“…A systematic review on the empirical findings obtained by studies investigating the international migration dimension of climate change can be found in [50]. Here the authors call attention to the important role played by the specific context under scrutiny in shaping environmental migration at the international level.…”

“…In what follows we focus the attention mainly on more recent macro-studies only partially covered by [50]. These studies are also the result of a few recent efforts made in building comprehensive datasets, such as the bilateral migration dataset of [77].…”

Migration and global environmental change: methodological lessons from mountain areas of the global South

“…The literature would also benefit from more systematic transdisciplinary empirical approaches, and a widespread use of mixed quantitative and qualitative methods (Obokata et al, 2014;Piguet, 2010;Warner, 2011a, b).…”

Social protection as a strategy to address climate-induced migration

“…There is a broad consensus that climate change will affect human migration in different ways (Adger et al, 2014;Black et al, 2011;Foresight, 2011;Ionesco et al, 2017;Obokata et al, 2014;Piguet, 2012;Tacoli, 2009;Warner and Afifi, 2014). Substantial evidence suggests that planning for and facilitation of migration can reduce future costs and increase human security (Adams and Adger, 2013;Adger et al, 2014;Ionesco et al, 2017).…”