Julian Hattem
Experts & Staff
Julian Hattem
Editor, Migration Information Source
Julian Hattem is Editor of the Migration Information Source, the online journal of the Migration Policy Institute, and is responsible for its content and publication.
Before joining MPI, he spent a decade as a journalist focusing on international migration, politics, and conflict. He has been on staff with the Associated Press, The Hill, and the Yomiuri Shimbun, and has been awarded journalism fellowships from the Heinrich Boell Foundation North America and the International Reporting Project to report on migration in Southern Europe and Southeast Asia. As a freelance journalist he reported from four continents, and his articles have been published by outlets including the Guardian, the Washington Post, Public Radio International, World Politics Review, National Public Radio, and Quartz.
Mr. Hattem holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago and a master’s degree in conflict studies from the London School of Economics.
Recent Activity
Reliable access to food—or lack thereof—can affect an individual’s decision to migrate. Climate change has the ability to exacerbate food insecurity, especially for farmers and others who live off the land, which can have repercussions for human mobility. In this episode we talk with Megan Carney, an anthropologist and director of the University of Arizona’s Center for Regional Food Studies, to examine the role of food security in the connection between climate change and migration.
Billions of dollars are being spent on projects to help communities mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change, including those at risk of being displaced by environmental events. This episode features Timo Schmidt, from MPI Europe, in a discussion about the growing field of climate finance and its implications for migration management and displacement prevention.
Confronting environmental change, whole communities sometimes relocate from one area to another. This purposeful, coordinated movement, while currently rare, is referred to as managed retreat. In this episode Architesh Panda, from the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, explains how this climate adaptation strategy works in India.
There are a lot of predictions about how many people will migrate in response to climate change. Depending on where you look, the next few decades could see hundreds of millions – or even more than a billion – people pick up and move. We asked Julia Blocher, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, to explain why the predictions vary so much. We also discussed how this movement can lead to conflict.
The relationship between climate change and migration is long and complex. Human civilizations have been affected by environmental conditions for centuries, but we should be wary of arguments that huge numbers of people are inevitably destined to migrate in response to specific climate threats. In this episode of Changing Climate, Changing Migration, we chat with Alex de Sherbinin of Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network about what the research shows—and does not show.