Trapped Populations: When Climate Migration Isn’t Possible

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CHAPTERS 

[00:00:09]: What “trapped populations” are in the context of climate change 

[00:05:00]: Economic, social, and political barriers that limit mobility 

[00:10:12]: Comparing climate-related immobility with conflict and other forms of displacement 

[00:13:24]: Gaps in legal protection for people affected by climate-related risks 

[00:16:49]: Distinguishing between constrained immobility and the choice to stay 

[00:20:04]: Policy approaches that support both mobility and the ability to remain in place 

[00:25:36]: Mobility disruptions among nomadic groups and people in transit 

TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:03.15] 

Hello, this is Changing Climate, Changing Migration coming to you from the Migration Policy Institute. This is a podcast all about how climate change is upending and in some cases, preventing migration. I'm Julian Hattem. I'm the editor of MPI's Migration Information Source, which is our online magazine providing data and analysis about international migration around the world. This podcast is part of MPI's focus on climate change and migration. You can read more online at migrationpolicy.org/climate. For today, our podcast might as well be called Changing Climate. No Migration. We're talking about trapped populations, which is a term that's been used to describe people who might be better off migrating away from disaster areas, but for whatever reason, cannot. For these people, migration might be their best option, but climate change or other factors are making that impossible. My guest is Caroline Zickgraf. She is the deputy director of the Hugo Observatory at the University of Liège in Belgium. I want to begin by talking about why being stuck in place might be so bad. I guess it seems obvious why someone might want to evacuate to escape a hurricane or a wildfire or, or some other fast onset climate event.

[00:01:29.11] 

But it's not quite so clear why migration or displacement is a good idea for people facing slower onset hazards like extreme heat, drought, sea level rise, things like that. Can you explain that to me? Why might it be better to flee away from those kinds of hazards?

[00:01:45.23] 

Yeah, absolutely. I think migration can provide three things. I'd say one would be safety, two would be security, and three would be opportunity. So in terms of safety, of course it's more obvious when we talk about sudden onset events, why someone would want to evacuate, and that even displacement becomes a life saving strategy. But this also holds true for slower onset events. So when we see those creeping effects of climate change, they still present physical threats. When you're facing coastal erosion and sea level rise, we see houses partially or entirely falling into the sea. Migrating or moving even short distances can provide a very real physical sense of safety. Then in terms of security, in a broader sense of human security. So migration can provide. One of the things we talk about most often is financial security. So for the people who are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, a lot of times those people are living in rural areas depending on natural resources. So farming communities, fishers, people engaged in forestry, and any of those livelihoods that depend on natural resources are under threat. When we look at temperature rise, erratic rainfall, again, soil salinization linked to coastal flooding.

[00:03:20.22] 

And so migrating can provide a much more stable and secure type of livelihood. So you're no longer thinking about, well, what happens if this harvest is not productive. So migration gets you out of that insecure economic circumstance, but also provides psychological benefits of security too, when you're not again wondering, is my house going to fall into the sea? Am I going to be able to make my basic, meet my basic needs? So migration provides those sense of those types of security as well as social benefits, social networks, and all of these other ways in which people can just improve their well being. And then lastly, in terms of opportunity, I don't think that this is necessarily unique to context of climate change, but in any sense, migration can provide opportunities for people, again, economic, again, physical safety, but also educational opportunities, things that you can learn through migration and develop skills that can also be brought back to communities of origin. So it can be benefits for the people who migrate, but it's also about the benefits that that can provide for the people who stay, allowing people not to depend on what's happening to their natural environments, even if they themselves never migrate by receiving remittances.

[00:04:43.03] 

And again, that's not just financial, receiving money from migrants abroad, but also receiving transfer of skills, of knowledge, of technology, for example.

[00:04:53.01] 

And so then I guess what is preventing that movement? I guess what is trapping people in

[00:04:58.21] 

place precisely? When people are trapped in context of climate change, it's similar to how we think about why people move in terms of there is no one answer. Even in context of climate change, when it's very apparent that their environment is deteriorating, there's not just one reason people move, there's not just one reason people can't move. It can be something like financial resources. So any type of migration, even if that's precarious, it takes some type of resources. So you might need money to move, but you also might need social networks that extend beyond the place that you live. So it's not just about can I leave, but where would I go to where who's going to provide accommodation for me or how am I going to find a job there. So if I don't know anyone that can help me, that can be a way of a means of trapping people. So that can be a trapping factor. Also the physical ability to move. So if I can't, you know, if I have a person with a disability, for example, well, migration is not as easy as it is for people who maybe can physically move much easier.

[00:06:12.17] 

And that aligns us all with age. But also, again, if I'm a retired person and I'm elderly, well, what am I going to do when I get there, how am I going to provide for myself or for others? So it can be any number of social factors as well that trap people in place, that prevent people from moving even when they want to. And then I think another big one to highlight is how politics affect people's ability to move. So it's not just about is climate change happening or not happening? And am I suffering from climate change and unable to move? But if there aren't opportunities for people to migrate, whether that's to the nearby city, whether that's to another country, that in itself can trap people. So politics have a big say in who goes and who stays. That might be through migration policies. Who is offered those opportunities, who has access to visas, who has access to international movements, but again, internal movements. But it's also about development policies. It's about how we treat poverty. And are those people who are poor able to pay for a visa? So all of these things that kind of collide together.

[00:07:25.09] 

Again, not one thing, but all of these factors, social, political, economic, environmental and demographic colliding to keep people in place.

[00:07:37.07] 

And you answered this a bit. But I'm curious if there is a profile of people who are most likely to be trapped in place. You talked about the elderly, people with disabilities, people who are poor, don't have a lot of money. I mean, is there anyone that I'm missing there that's kind of very obviously is disproportionately likely to be stuck in place even while everyone around them moves?

[00:07:58.05] 

Sure. Well, it's always an intersection of vulnerabilities. So it's difficult for me to say, you know, this group, you know, women or elderly or children, or it's often about maybe women who are depending on agriculture in rural areas who may be at a disadvantage or who are marginalized, populations that again, don't have those resources, that have amplified vulnerabilities to begin with, that then don't have access to the same migration opportunities and are then more likely to become trapped. But it's, of course, never a given. It's never a given that just because a woman is a woman, she's not able to migrate. In some countries and context, we see women m have more migration opportunities and maybe not maybe because of their skill sets and demand a certain country. So we look at countries like the Philippines where women have a lot of migration opportunities, and it's not always the same profile in every country, although we do sometimes see, again, these intersections of poverty, of gender, of physical ability, of age colliding to be trapping populations.

[00:09:19.03] 

And we're talking in this conversation is about climate change. But you mentioned before, I think this is not necessarily a dynamic that is unique to people in communities affected by climate change. Right. Both conflict, economic crises, but also just relative general poverty seem to also affect the situation. I mean, I guess, is that fair? Is there anything unique about people trapped, quote, unquote, amid climate, climate in climate affected areas by or amid climate events? Or is it similar to people trapped amid and by climate, economic crisis, anything else?

[00:09:56.20] 

I think it is very similar in many cases. So we talk about trapped populations. I think it's partaking a particular foothold as an idea and a concept when it comes to climate change, because that's where we've been talking about it and studying it. But it doesn't mean it's unique to that context. Again, we can think about poverty and how that affects trapping people in environmental context, but we can also think about how poverty traps people at large and prevents them from being able to migrate when they want to migrate. Conflict is a big one. Of course, when you talk about again another type of crisis that people are facing where migration or even displacement might be some sort of option. And in conflict, again, maybe that prevents your movement from sometimes the same reasons as it does in environmental context. But also these things can happen at the same time. So in a lot of places you see conflict and climate change coming together and sometimes they work together to trap people. So there's a conflict going on and I'm facing a drought, so I'm not able to use my normal kind of mobility strategies.

[00:11:09.03] 

Normally maybe I would move to the next town over during the off season to kind of offset that, that risk to my livelihood. But hey, there's a conflict going on and I'm not able to do that. So that can have kind of a double trapping effect. Or sometimes what we've seen, for example in the Sahel is that people might want to move because of the environment, or they might want to stay in a place because of the environment, but then because of conflict, they're kind of assessing risk. So what is the most imminent threat to me? You know, is it my failing crop or is it, you know, this very physical threat to an imminent threat to my life provided by conflict? So sometimes people are having to make choices between that's based on, you know, multiple forms of risk, colliding and having to oftentimes people choose, you know, the safety versus conflict rather than the environment. But of course, these things are unique in some ways in environmental context where you don't see conflict at the same time, I think, because you have different actors at play for one second. So if you're in a place that's relatively politically stable, you're not facing conflict.

[00:12:23.17] 

Now, what is the role of the government? And that changes again, in terms of what are the solutions, who are crafting those solutions, versus a conflict situation where maybe the government is not able to respond to that or intervene in the people who are trapped in their lives and help them out. But in context of climate change, we have more people who are in governments who should at least be involved and be able to implement solutions in different ways than we might see in a conflict situation. Now, on the other hand, if I can say that in some cases conflict, we have legal mechanisms to protect people in conflict displacement scenarios. So refugees. There is such a thing as a refugee status. So if you cross a border and you claim asylum, ideally not always, you're able to gain some sort of legal protection. But we don't have that when it comes to climate. So if you can't cross a border and claim, you know, asylum based on climate change, you actually have fewer options at your disposal. So you may be trapped in that sense, because I don't have. I can't even if I could physically cross that border, there's nothing waiting for me there in terms of protection.

[00:13:42.04] 

So that missing protection mechanism, at least internationally, is different to a conflict situation.

[00:13:51.21] 

Yeah. Which goes back to the point you were making earlier, about one of the many things that traps people is the legal systems, or lack thereof, I guess. But I also want to. I want to talk about solutions by governments, by NGOs. But I also, and I'm so I'm curious, on the one hand, what are those solutions? What should or could these governments, organizations be doing? But also, how do we distinguish between people who want to leave and cannot and people who don't want to leave and would prefer to stay in place? And how. How do we make that distinction? Is that always an obvious line? And how do you try and support the former, the people who want to leave, without running the risk of forcing people off their land, which is, you know, incredibly historically contentious activity? And how do you as a government balance that? And how do you as a researcher kind of deal with those seemingly inherent ambiguities about motivations and what people want to do?

[00:14:51.23] 

Yeah, absolutely. This is a difficult. It's a difficult distinction to make. I'm not sure we can always make it between people who are. Are trapped and people who choose to stay. And I think this is something we've seen kind of historically with how we talk about migration and climate change is, and perhaps that's because of the political nature of this discussion, is that before we used to always talk about, or people or media or the public would talk about climate refugees and forget that there are people who migrate for all those reasons we mentioned before. Because it can be a beneficial thing, it can be a strategy to adapt to climate change and not necessarily a failure to adapt. We have this black and white. Migration is a bad thing and staying in place is assumed to be good. Now we've switched a little bit because we've introduced this narrative about migration as adaptation strategy. And that haze is not always bad. And, and hey, staying in place can be bad. And so we focused a lot on people becoming trapped and not necessarily acknowledged that there's also nuance in immobility. So as you said, there are a lot of people who choose to stay, and that's for a number of reasons, but there are people who are suffering many of the same consequences as the people who go or the people who become trapped but don't want to leave.

[00:16:28.12] 

And the distinction can be clear. It can be, hey, I just don't want to go. My family is here. This is the place that I grew up. This is where I want to stay. And I don't care. Even in most dire circumstances, I would rather die here than move somewhere else. But distinguishing between, you know, the ability to move and the desire to move, it's a gray zone. So for example, with the people that I work with, sometimes people will say, well, no, I can't go, but I don't want to because again, my, I have to take care of my, my parents, my elderly parents. So if I leave, who's going to take care of them? Now, we could say that that's being trapped, but that person might not say, no, I'm not trapped. I want to take care of my family. I want to be there for them. And so there are a lot of these gray zones between voluntary immobility and involuntary immobility, which is why we usually say it's a spectrum, right? It's a spectrum of agency. Just like with migration, there are situations that are more forced and there are situations that are more voluntary, but there are always constraints and in some cases, opportunities.

[00:17:47.24] 

Voluntary immobility in some cases we might say, oh, those are the people don't have any problems. They want to stay because they're not affected by climate change. Maybe they're the really wealthy people in a community. Maybe they have really great Houses that can withstand hurricanes and can withstand coastal erosion. It's really just the people who go that are the problem and that we need to help. But a lot of times even those most vulnerable populations, most vulnerable people, may still be the ones who say, hey, I don't want to leave. And solutions then become complex. So just like everything, we want a simple narrative, we want a simple solution. It's just not the case. You need complex solutions for complex problems. So governments supporting people who become trapped, or NGOs or international organizations, for me, whether it's about becoming trapped or involuntary mobile, it does change the character of the solution. Because if we think of people who become trapped as those people who need to move, who want to move but can't move, then we think about how can programs and policies provide people migration opportunities or relocation opportunities? Because we don't need to convince them, we just need to give them those pathways that might be bilateral agreements, that might be visas, that might be relocation programs where we relocate an entire community that's affected by, repeatedly affected by flooding and we move them somewhere else, obviously with their consent.

[00:19:29.04] 

But when it's about involuntary or, sorry, voluntary immobility, now relocation, for example, that type of policy mechanism becomes more difficult because how do you convince people who don't want to move to move? That involves that much more consultation, that much more understanding why, what is keeping people in place and how might you address those, those needs somewhere else. But ultimately it becomes in either situation about enabling the right to stay as much as the right to go. So policies that are focused on choice rather than focused on privileging a migration outcome. So saying nobody should leave or everybody should leave, it's never going to be that simple. That's never going to work. So we can't just stop migration and we can't just facilitate it. It really has to be again about choice and human rights based approaches.

[00:20:29.15] 

So I guess ideally you present, you, you make a system so that both moving away or not moving away are equally easy. Right? There's a framework to do both and then the individual can choose, all else being equal, which they personally wanted to do. Other like examples from the world that we can look at. I know managed relocation, planned relocation, things you've talked about have been on the rise, particularly in the Pacific Islands, but also elsewhere. I mean, are those effective solutions, are there effective solutions that you have seen implemented in the real world that even if they do not apply to every situation, were at least good for that particular situation?

[00:21:08.21] 

Yes. So there are of course relocation programs that you know, have been done considering what people want. So for example, you know, you have procedures, programs where they consider that people in Vietnam, for example, you've had relocation programs responding to flooding, landslides, riverbank erosion, etc., where people were offered to relocate but very short distances. So it's a way of, you know, people, when we say immobile and mobile, it's sometimes people who are immobile or mobile, it's very small distances we call micro mobilities.

[00:21:45.20] 

So these with me, like a mile or two or three. Like a kilometer.

[00:21:49.00] 

Yes. Or even a few hundred meters. Yeah. Where we're able to stay close enough to our farmlands, but just move our house or where we're able to still go to the same place of worship, we're still able to visit ancestral burial grounds. Like ancestral burial grounds are a big one. That come up a lot about why people don't, people don't want to leave. They feel that's abandoning their, their homelands or their ancestors or again, moving people so that the sense of community remains intact. That loss of culture, that loss of cultural identity that may come with migration is addressed. There's also programs that have been done in the past that are focused on preparing people to migrate with dignity. So in the South Pacific, you've had programs in the past where the focus was not on forcing people to go or forcing people to stay, but recognizing that a warming world is a world in which some Pacific Islanders may need to move. And if we're going to move, let's do it with dignity. So let's provide training programs, skills programs, language programs, so that if people want to embark on international migration, they, they're able to do so, but also do so in the best of circumstances.

[00:23:14.22] 

They're able to go to those places, those destinations, and you know, plug a gap in the labor market. They're able to speak the language, they're able to integrate and also stay connected to their places of origin. So again, that's not forcing anybody to move, but it allows people to do so in the best ways and again, still stay connected to the people back home. Because it's all often not about an either or. So some people in the same families may go and then that allows other people to stay. So through those, those dynamics, those remittances that, that we discussed earlier and again, it's about a very dignity centered, human rights based approach to how we think about the relationship between climate and human mobility.

[00:24:01.23] 

We're almost out of time, but before we wrap up, I want to pivot slightly. We've Basically been talking about a group of people who are resident in place A and they live there for all or most of their lives. And then maybe or maybe not, they move to place B. But there are also a large number of people who are always kind of on the move or often on the move, right? Whether they are nomadic populations, people who migrate a lot regularly, seasonal labor workers, pastoralists, herders in rural areas who might be going from point A to B to C to D to E to F, all within a couple of months. And then there's also, of course, people who are already going from point A to B, but a climate event happens, a hurricane or a flood or something, while they are in between point A and B. And so they're going from sub Saharan Africa to Europe, for instance, they get trapped in Libya, whatever, I guess. How is there a different conversation to be had about those different people who are already on the move and then they are trapped kind of in the midst of their movement or in the midst of their.

[00:25:06.16] 

Like a mobility interrupted, I guess, is perhaps a way to think of it. I mean, what is that? Another wrinkle? How do we, how do we conceptualize that additional angle?

[00:25:16.12] 

I think this is a great question because we often slide into this thinking that we talk about immobility or mobility, that, you know, people who are immobile have never moved in their lives and the people are mobile and that's all that they've ever done. But they. There are a lot of groups, as you've mentioned, for example, pastoralists and nomadic groups for whom mobility is the norm. And so if people continue mobile, that's not strange. And actually that disruption to their movement can actually be the problem. So for them, as we talk about, you know, the loss of culture, the threat to identity, to language, to ways of living now that maybe Pacific Islanders face, when we're talking about migration, we can be talking about those very same threats when it comes to pastoralists and nomadic groups, Fulani herders in West Africa who can no longer move or can't move in the same ways. And now how do they again treat that in terms of livelihood, but also in terms of culture? How do you maintain a culture based on movement when that movement is taken away? So that in some ways are the same risk, but again, very different solutions, because now we have to look at how, how do you re-instill mobility or how do you adapt those ways of living to a sedentary lifestyle?

[00:26:45.04] 

Now, for people who are, we could say, trapped in transit. So people who are going somewhere, whether circular migration or Again, for whom mobility may be very normal, maybe doing for generations based on their livelihood, based on their culture, and who maybe for, no, not motivated by environment, but are doing it for economic reasons, whatever, but then face an environmental shock now are stuck somewhere. So as you said, it might be in, we've seen this in Libya and people coming from Sub-Saharan Africa and then are trapped in Libya or trapped wherever they, they may be going by a sudden shock event where they lose all of the resources that they had in order to continue that migration journey, whether that's to return or whether that's to keep going somewhere else. Now it's also, again, a different type of risks because now you're without that social support system you have. You might be without papers, you may be having no access to social services, no legal protections. In fact, you might very much want to stay away from authorities or anyone who might, you know, further put you in danger. Or, you know, again, you might not be able to return, but you want to, maybe you want to continue.

[00:28:07.24] 

And so this can also be what we see as protracted displacement. So when we talk about people displaced again by conflict, people who are displaced by conflict and then get hit by a flood in a refugee camp, people who are displaced for more than a year, it's also a form of becoming trapped, right? So it's, it's, we can look at it through the mobility lens and that people are displaced or they've already migrated, or we can look at it through an immobility lens which is, wow, these people are stuck, stuck after the initial movement. And so, yeah, there are different risks there. There are in some cases little to no protection or again, no social support, no, no way of those people returning. And so sometimes those risks are the same, sometimes they're very unique and again require different solutions and different actors at play.

[00:29:04.05] 

I could keep going, but I think that's all we have time for today, unfortunately. But this was super interesting and very engaging.

[00:29:11.11] 

Yeah.

[00:29:11.18] 

Caroline, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. This was a fun conversation.

[00:29:15.10] 

Thank you so much for having me.

[00:29:16.20] 

Caroline Zickgraf is the Deputy Director of the Hugo Observatory at the University of Liege in Belgium. She also teaches at IHECS in Brussels and Sciences Po's Paris School of International Affairs. She helps to run the Habitable Project which is a comprehensive overview of climate related migration. They do a bit of everything and if you like what you heard and want to keep on touch, keep on, keep tabs with what she's up to, she's on Twitter @ckzickgraf. Thank you for listening to Changing Climate, Changing Migration. If you liked my discussion with Caroline, please subscribe to the podcast to catch all of our new episodes. Changing Climate, Changing Migration is available wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there, please leave us a rating. If you want to hear more, take a look through our archives.

[00:30:06.14] 

You can find them online at migrationpolicy.org/podcasts. Also on that page you will find information about MPI's other podcasts, which I definitely recommend checking out. World of Migration features big conversations about trends in international migration and Moving Beyond Pandemic provides snapshots of migration and mobility after COVID 19. Subscribe to the Migration Information Source newsletter online at migrationinformation.org. It's 100% free, comes out twice per month, and features articles, analysis and insights on migration trends worldwide. MPI is on all the major social media platforms. Follow us to stay on top of new publications and events, you can email me directly at [email protected]. I'd love to hear your ideas for new episodes and anything else you'd like to tell me. Yoseph Hamid produced this episode. Lisa Dixon provided assistance and oversight came from Michelle Mittelstadt. Our theme music is Touched by Patrick Patrikios. My name is Julian Hattem. See you next time.