As climate changes across the world, we can anticipate large flows of migrants both internally and internationally. This is happening now in the natural world among plants and animals. About half of the species assessed globally by the sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have shifted towards the poles or to higher elevations in recent years (IPCC 2023). Humans will also move as the environment changes, as we have done throughout our history as a species. In this paper, I will describe the types of climate migrants we should expect, and how we can best prepare for their integration into receiving communities. Climate migration will pose many challenges but can also be framed positively, with informed policies leading to positive outcomes for both migrants and receiving communities.
The State of the Field
Current research on climate migration is dominated by quantitative studies attempting to predict how many people will move and where they will go (Hunter and Norton 2015). These studies correlate migration with rainfall and temperature in a quest for models that predict human behaviors (Molina et al. 2023). This research also focuses on the link between climate change and conflict, such as the Syrian war, Arab Spring, and conflicts in Central American and sub-Saharan Africa (Abel et al. 2019). These studies demonstrate that at the aggregate level migration flows are correlated with climate indicators, but political, economic, and social factors interact with environmental factors to shape migration decisions. Migration at the individual level is influenced by many factors simultaneously, making it very difficult to identify someone as solely a “climate migrant”.
Qualitative studies of people dealing with climate change demonstrate that migration is often a last resort. People will adapt in place if they can (Castro and Sen 2022). This is due to human psychology and to institutions which continue to reinforce the status quo, despite our changed world. Psychologists have identified loss aversion as a strong motivating factor for all kinds of human behavior (Kahneman 2011). The longer people hold on in a deteriorating situation the greater their fear of losing, and the more sunk costs motivate them to try to recoup their losses. A farmer facing a drought will stay hoping that the rain will come back. The longer they remain in place the more they will lose as they sell off their animals and other resources to keep going. These individual motivations to avoid change are exacerbated by institutions which encourage a blind eye to climate change and exacerbate the tendency of people to stay in place. For instance, flood and homeowners insurance in the United States encourages people to rebuild in places damaged due to climate change (Elliott 2021). Emergency aid is also targeted towards rebuilding and not towards relocating to a safer spot (Arcaya, Raker and Waters 2020).
Climate Migration and Right-Wing Politics
Discussions of climate migration in the popular press are characterized by extreme projections and scaremongering. A recent widely cited report said that 1.2 billion people would be moving by the year 2050 (Institute for Economics and Peace 2020). This is obviously a very extreme and highly unlikely number; arrived at by assuming that anyone who lives in a low elevation coastal zone, which is described as any area under 10 meters in elevation within 100 kilometers of the coast, will have to relocate. This is interpreted as meaning that the populations of countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt and Nigeria will relocate (Neumann et al. 2015). These estimates are not a result of careful science. Perhaps they are put forward and spread because of a well-meaning desire to foment alarm about climate change. But dire predictions about the volume of climate migration can have negative feedback effects on support for both immigration and climate mitigation efforts.
In Europe and the United States, the rise of anti-immigrant parties and politics has increasingly overlapped with climate skepticism (Lockwood 2019). Voters who support right wing politicians fear the cultural and economic changes from immigration, hold skeptical views on climate change, and oppose climate change mitigation efforts (Kulin, Seva and Dunlap 2021). Right-wing parties in the U.S. and Europe accrue political capital from the fear of climate-driven immigration. Those who over-predict climate migration contribute to these fears.
Action on climate change requires trust in science, government and generalized social trust (Smith and Mayer 2018). Immigration, in the short run, decreases social trust, thus making it harder to deal with climate change (Ziller, Wright and Hewstone 2019). Climate change increases immigration, fueling a positive feedback loop that tends to undermine support for changes needed to reduce further damage. Migration is an integral part of climate change, and it interacts with our ability to manage it. Consequently, receiving countries need to manage not only flows of immigrants but their reception, in order to maximize integration and minimize the conflict and fear that leads to declining social trust.
The Realities of Climate Migration
Migration theory, rooted in a large body of empirical research, tells us that when people migrate there are three aspects to their moves. First, they follow social networks. People move to places they know people: where family or friends have already settled. The networked nature of migration is very helpful to the successful integration of migrants in their destinations, as previous migrants help new ones both find housing and jobs and provide social and material supports. Networks of migration predict many future immigration flows. New migrants to a country will likely come from the countries that have sent migrants who are already well settled in the receiving nation.
Second, the majority of migrants will move short distances. Long distance migration is the exception, not the rule, meaning most climate migration will be internal. Of course, as migration grows, even if only a small percentage of all migrants cross international borders, it will be a marked increase in world migration flows (Bellizzi et al. 2023). However, it is clear that countries, especially in the global south, will need to accommodate large internal displacement.
Third, integration of immigrants can be very successful, but this does not happen automatically. Receiving communities should prepare for the integration of climate migrants, building on what we have learned from the integration of economic migrants, refugees, and asylees (Waters and Gerstein Pineau 2016).
A Typology of Climate Migrants
There are four migration-related responses to extreme changes in climate. Disasters such as fires, floods and storms can cause large, rapid and chaotic disaster migration. Slow onset climate change like droughts, floods, rising temperatures, crop failures, sea level rise and destruction of ecosystems cause strategic migration and managed retreat. Strategic migration is a choice made by individuals. It can be economically motivated or because of a perception that staying in place will be impossible (Castro 2023). Managed retreat is the organized movement of communities away from hazards. It will become inevitable in some places that become uninhabitable, such as low-lying island nations (National Academy of Sciences 2024). Finally, another there are trapped populations, people who cannot or will not move, but whose adaptation in place will increasingly fail (Black and Collyer 2014).
As the realization grows that people are moving and will move in the future because of the climate, policy debates have focused on how to define climate migrants and whether they should be a new legal category. Legally, a refugee is a person forced to flee because of a well-founded fear of persecution due to race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. This definition does not include people moving because of climate-induced events or changes, many of whom claim asylum because it is often the only path available for migration. Consequently, identifying climate migrants at the individual level is very difficult. Critics of the idea of climate migrants question whether the category will be essentializing and worry that drawing attention to this population will fuel a backlash, further eroding support for welcoming immigrants.
There is also a policy debate about what the developed world owes to the developing world. The developed countries who contributed the CO2 emissions driving climate change are not bearing the brunt of climate change damage. The countries in the global south who have contributed the least to the problem are facing the worst consequences. Their citizens are the ones most likely to be forced to migrate in the future. An intriguing proposal addressing this inequity is that visas can be used as a form of reparation (Gonzalez 2022). Permanent visas could be issued to countries facing all three types of migration – disaster, strategic and managed retreat.[1] Strategically allocating visas to countries badly affected by climate change as a way of responding to climate disasters and seeding thoughtful climate migration is a plausible path forward for developed countries to consider.
There are several benefits to increasing the number of visas available to countries experiencing the negative effects of climate change, without necessarily requiring that migrants prove they are “climate migrants”. These visas will be taken up by strategic migrants seeking a solution to deteriorating conditions. These migrants will then, following common practice, send home economic remittances that can be used to adapt in place by those who cannot or do not choose to move, increasing the resources of the trapped populations. Disaster migrants will seek out established migrant communities, using network ties to integrate and join the work force. Low fertility and an aging population in almost all developed countries means their need for labor will be very strong in the coming decades. Allowing more migrants under a planned process will ease labor shortages and optimize integration.
A city that has built on previous migration to create mutually beneficial opportunities for disaster migrants is Buffalo, New York. Buffalo is a declining city that has been losing population for decades following the collapse of manufacturing jobs, going from a peak population in 1950 of 580,000 to a current population of 260,000. As a result, Buffalo has enough land, housing, sewer and water infrastructure to support hundreds of thousands of additional people. Buffalo saw a chance to increase its population when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, in 2017, causing 5,000 deaths and leading 130,000 people, 5% of the island’s population, to leave. Most migrants went to Florida but family and network connections to Buffalo’s Puerto Rican community also attracted migrants. Buffalo advertised on Puerto Rican radio to welcome people considering relocating. The city hired teachers from Puerto Rico to help with the influx of Spanish speaking students. Community organizations found households to host families from Puerto Rico who needed a place to stay and put together fresh start kits with kitchenware, blankets, winter clothes, and baby items. While some of the 5,000 people who consequently came to Buffalo went back when they could, many permanently relocated. In the 2020 Census Buffalo showed its first population increase in 70 years (National Academy of Sciences 2024). Across Europe and North America there are regions and cities that have been losing population. Some of these areas have been revitalized by the settlement of refugees, and disaster migrants could also be framed as a solution to their economic woes to be embraced, rather than as a problem to be resisted.
Managing the Integration of Climate Migrants
A recipe for declining social trust and anti-immigration politics would include rapid immigration, the kind of migration that most characterizes disaster migration. Conditions undermining integration would include segregation and limited interaction between immigrants and natives, rising income inequality, fears about economic insecurity and declining social mobility, and leaders who exploit these fears and use immigrants as a scapegoat. To add to this recipe, one might also include the existential fear of climate change and predictions of the arrival of masses of climate migrants.
Immigrant integration can, however, be remarkably successful (Waters and Pineau 2016). The recipe for success is equal contact between natives and immigrants in institutions in everyday life, a slower growth of immigration, and settlement in areas with institutions that facilitate integration and have a history of incorporating immigrants (Kotzur, Tropp and Wagner 2018). Also, it is important to have leadership that frames immigrants as a benefit. Ramos et al. (2019) finds that within four to eight years the effect of intergroup contact mediates and vastly reduces the relationship between higher diversity and lower social trust.
In planning for the future, governments should plan for the different types of migration, increasing opportunities for strategic migration by preparing destination locations and accepting more migrants. To facilitate successful integration, societies should focus not just on who goes where, but how natives and immigrants will have opportunities to interact and create bonds.
In considering disaster migration, plans should incorporate social justice into the response, not just recreating existing inequality or worsening it. Best practices will abandon an individualistic approach to resettlement and prioritize the need of people to be with their communities and family members in any relocation (Waters 2016). The integration of disaster migrants into their new communities, whether internally or internationally displaced, should also involve focusing on the needs of receiving communities. Too often refugees have been settled in areas where the poor who already lived there did not receive aid, and this caused conflict with the refugees who were seen to be getting preferential treatment. Current residents will be much more likely to welcome migrants if they are also getting needed assistance and having their social problems addressed.
Western Europe and the United States are facing a demographic crisis and labor shortages. Like Buffalo, many cities and rural areas need migrants to rejuvenate their economies. To facilitate the successful match between climate migrants who need a safer place to live and communities who need migrants to bolster their populations, we need to strengthen institutions that help integrate migrants, and strengthen government capacity for facilitating integration. In anticipation of the growth of migrants coming to these areas, we need to develop plans for both slow and fast climate migration.
Social scientists can contribute to this planning, sharing how increasing the numbers of strategic migrants through visa programs will help more people adapt in place by increasing remittances, ultimately relieving population pressure. These migrants will also seed further migration, but the social networks that connect sending and receiving communities will assist the integration of later migrants, including those who move rapidly because of disasters. Our institutions can be advised to be organized to foster positive contact and sustained social interactions between natives and immigrants. We also need political leadership that frames immigration in a positive way and rises to the inevitable challenge that increased human mobility will pose in the coming decades.
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[1] The United States already uses Temporary Protected Status (TPS) as a way to help people fleeing disasters – but it is merely a temporary fix that does not grant a path to citizenship and only benefits disaster migrants after they have made their way to the U.S.