Migration matters: How migration is critical to contemporary human–environment geography

Abstract

Human migration plays a critical role in numerous contemporary environmental concerns including global climate change and environmental justice. This review characterizes the ways migration is critical to contemporary humanenvironment geography. We delineate four themes from the literature based on (a) how migration affects the environment; (b) how the environment and/or environmental events affect migration; (c) how migration produces uneven environmental benefits and burdens; and (d) how environmental displacement/dispossession produces migration and vice versa. We articulate five recommendations for a research agenda that integrates migration processes, recognizes migration as a heterogeneous process, and approaches human-environment interactions holistically and non-deterministically.

Outmigration and Land-Use Change: A Case Study from the Middle Hills of Nepal

“…More focused locally-specific adaptive strategies targeting the needs of farming communities is of the utmost importance for creating a positive policy environment to attract further investment and participation in an evolving agricultural sector. It is important to consider the country's changing population dynamics together with the changing socioeconomic and 10 Tunnel farming is when a small plastic greenhouse-like structure is used to keep the soil warm and promotes germination.…”

“…Many researchers have identified rural outmigration as an important driver of major changes in land-use, the rural economy, and socio-economic opportunities, with one consequence being a change in the management and scale of farmland [1][2][3][4][5]. It is important to understand these complex interactions and the impacts to design land-use policies that support rural livelihoods, national efforts to achieve food security, and sustainable use of natural resources [6][7][8][9][10].…”

Migration, Remittances, and Forest Cover Change in Rural Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico

“…Study of the environment-migration nexus has gained traction in recent decades [1][2][3], and the current climate concerns have become a "wake-up call to migration scholars" [4] (p. 473). While there is a vigorous debate on migration caused by climate change and associated vulnerabilities, as well as on environmental impacts of migration in destination areas, much less work examines the outcomes of migration on the environment in migrants' places of origin [5][6][7][8][9].…”

Reversing Channels and Unsettling Binaries: Rethinking Migration and Agrarian Change under Expanded Border and Immigration Enforcement

“…The literature has made substantial strides in improving our understanding of migration and agrarian change dynamics across space and time. Yet, amid these advancements, scholarship by and large continues to draw on a conceptual model developed in earlier research that holds the intersecting "channels" of remittance inflows and reduced labor availability as the central drivers of change from migration [62,90]. The bulk of research also continues to measure change through comparative assessment of various socioeconomic indicators between migrant and non-migrant households.…”

“…From the outset, this literature has taken a particular interest in how migration reshuffles land distribution and land use dynamics among rural migrant and non-migrant households [34,72,91]. In the ensuing years, the literature has expanded from these origins to form a robust body of work exploring the complex outcomes of migration for a gamut of agricultural, social, and environmental dynamics, as well as the multiple factors that shape trajectories of change across unique spatial and temporal scales [e.g., 20,32,52,61,62,106]. With global migrations showing no sign of abating under intersecting economic, security, and environmental crises, continued research on migration and its implications for migrant-sending communities remains as relevant as ever.…”