What Exactly Is Climate Migration?

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CHAPTERS 

[00:04:55]: Why climate-based migration pathways remain limited 

[00:09:38]: The limits of forecasting climate-related migration 

[00:11:15]: How large-scale projections shape public and policy debates 

[00:18:14]: Climate-related immobility and populations with limited ability to move 

[00:22:54]: Distinguishing between constrained immobility and the choice to stay 

[00:25:53]: “Climate mobility” and the role of terminology in shaping understanding 

[00:28:07]: Rethinking climate change as a factor influencing all forms of migration 

 

TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:02.10] 

Hello, and welcome to Changing Climate, Changing Migration. This is a podcast from the Migration Policy Institute that breaks down all the different ways that climate change and migration intersect. My name is Julian Hattem. I'm the editor of MPI's online magazine called the Migration Information Source. That's where we provide a wide range of data and analysis about international migration trends and policies worldwide in ways that are accessible to the general public. You can check it out online at migrationinformation.org/climate. When we talk about climate migration, what exactly are we talking about? It's rarely the case that climate change in particular, is the sole reason why people move from one place to another. People have always fled natural disasters, and when the impacts of climate change combine with economic stresses, political crises, and other factors, it can be hard to disentangle what movement precisely is due to climate change and what's in response to other drivers. So what exactly is climate migration and what isn't it? Joining me today is Kerilyn Schewel, a co director of the Duke University Program on Climate-Related Migration and a lecturing fellow at Duke's Center for International Development. Kerilyn, hello. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Julian.

 

 

 

[00:01:28.01] 

So great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Sure.

 

 

 

[00:01:30.24] 

So this is perhaps an awkward question to ask on a podcast that builds itself about as being about climate migration, but what exactly is climate migration, or what makes this a tricky concept to define?

 

 

 

[00:01:45.03] 

Well, there's no widely accepted definition of climate migration, nor does any government offer a legal migration pathway that's based solely on an individual's exposure to climate change. And many academics are actually against using the term climate migration altogether. I think the main reason being that it risks mischaracterizing how migration works. So migration is an extremely complex human behavior. It's shaped by a wide range of political, economic, cultural factors. And I think some people worry that the term climate migration necessarily reduces this complexity into a simple story of people who might be otherwise happily sedentary being displaced or uprooted by climate change. I'm sympathetic to this worry, but I also think we do need more research and theorization about how climate change is going to impact migration, and recognizing that in some cases, climate change will have a more direct impact on population movements. In other cases, probably the majority of cases, the impact will be more indirect. So just to give a very coarse example of this, the displacement that follows a natural disaster, a severe storm or flood, is going to have a more direct relationship with climate change than what we might see with slow onset changes like changes in temperature variation, rainfall sea level rise.

 

 

 

[00:03:16.17] 

These have a more indirect relationship with migration. When climate change takes place gradually, it's mediated by these economic, political, cultural realities of a place. And for this reason, we may see very different kinds of migration responses to the same climate impacts, depending on the context that we're looking at. I think the trouble is we're trying to talk about all these different kinds of movements, from temporary displacement to long term labor migration as one thing, as climate migration. And that's the real challenge.

 

 

 

[00:03:51.13] 

In your opinion, it sounds like climate migration is not necessarily a misnomer. Right? Are we wrong to use this term or... It describes a thing, but it's kind of ambiguous what that thing is.

 

 

 

[00:04:03.01] 

Yeah, I think of it as a very, very big umbrella term with lots of subcategories. But I think when we hear the term, you know, it's hard to know what it is we're talking about sometimes. And you know, are we talking about the mass displacement that followed the catastrophic floods in Pakistan last year? Are we talking about farmers who are migrating seasonally to supplement their incomes because their crop yields weren't great that year? Is that climate migration? Does it count at climate migration if that community has done that for generations? You know, and it's just become more important as climate change progresses. Are we talking about snowbirds who are moving to Florida for warmer weather? So I think migration is so complex, it's so multifaceted. There's different kinds of movement. So we have to think in terms of different categories. And climate migration can be a very big umbrella category, but it's not going to be very useful if it just remains at that level. I think we do need to go to the level of kind of subcategories.

 

 

 

[00:05:05.08] 

I want to talk about categories for a second because I'm curious, like, what are the problems with that ambiguity? But also more generally, like, why are these categories useful? I mean, we also talk about, in other contexts, labor migrants and family migrants, but I think individuals tend not to. Them tend not to think of themselves as I am a labor migrant versus they are a family migrant versus whatever. Whatever. Right. Human beings are complex and everything we do is driven by a thousand different reasons and not there is one reason why someone is migrating. So what is the utility of these categories and what is the problem or what problems does that definitional ambiguity pose?

 

 

 

[00:05:48.15] 

Yeah, great question. I think when we're thinking about individuals and individual lives and individual stories, these never fit neatly into categories. And I think academics, we have a tendency to emphasize complexity and nuance, but we can do that to such a degree where it's hard to kind of say anything or to be able to see bigger picture patterns. And it also frustrates policymakers who are trying to design legal categories or pathways. And so they do have to kind of think in terms of categories. But I don't see kind of the quibble over the semantics of climate migration as being just almost an academic exercise. I think it really does have very real world consequences. And I think those consequences really come to the fore when we think about policymaking. So policymakers will not be able to design policies or legal pathways to support people who are adversely affected by climate change unless they have clarity about who we're actually talking about. We're not going to be able to design a pathway for climate migration if we can't actually say who counts as a climate migrant. In my view is. I'm not exactly sure we should be even trying to do that.

 

 

 

[00:07:03.10] 

I think we actually kind of need to lean into the ambiguity associated with the term climate migration. I think we need to try to clarify its different modalities and design policies that support these different kinds of climate related mobility and immobility. So this takes a kind of conceptual shift, I think, moving away from this desire to define or categorize or quantify climate migration to asking instead, what kinds of migration are going to be impacted by climate change? How will climate change impact the volumes or destinations of labor migrants, of refugee or survival migrants, of student or family migrants of different kinds of immobility? As you said, these existing categories, they have their problems, but these are the categories that shape policy and legal pathways. So we can't ignore them either.

 

 

 

[00:08:00.04] 

And I guess the legal pathways avenue is an interesting one to bring up right here too, because we, I mean we have legal pathways for quote unquote labor migrants. You can get a work visa, right? You can get a spouse visa. If you're a family migrant, you cannot get a climate visa for the most part, because that's not really a thing. There is no such thing as climate refugees, right? Because climate change is not provide a reason to grant refugee status under the 1951 Refugee Convention, etc. Etc. In my head, I feel like there's a bit of a chicken and the egg problem here, right? In that there is no legal definition category for climate migration per se, and we don't, which complicates thinking about climate migration as a more general category. And there's like which one comes first, the policy or the more the broader taxonomic category, I guess, if that makes sense. Right, I guess, yeah. Can you, can you help me reckon

 

 

 

[00:08:57.22] 

with that a bit there?

 

 

 

[00:08:58.14] 

I mean, how do we, how do we disentangle this Gordian knot?

 

 

 

[00:09:02.22] 

Yeah, right. That's a hard one. I think what we see, and this is maybe the direction we need to move in, is a widening or extension of existing legal categories to incorporate climate related moves. So I'm thinking, for example, of Argentina and their humanitarian visa that is specific to people who are displaced by sudden onset disasters. And so it offers them residency for three years, a potential pathway to permanent residency. In the US we have temporary protected status TPS. This is granted to some nationals from some countries that have experienced crises. And this can include severe natural disasters so long as they're already in the United States. And ideally, you could imagine this being extended to places where people aren't yet able to reach the US and apply for it, but are living in places that have been adversely affected by climate change or natural disasters. But neither of those examples really address slow onset climate changes. And I can understand from the perspective of having to administer these visas why that makes sense. But I think we also need policies that can assist those who are vulnerable or adversely affected by slow and climate change.

 

 

 

[00:10:24.08] 

And so in my mind, I really think the policies and legal categories that are going to have the greatest impact on those vulnerable to climate change are actually not specific to climate related migration. So I think here I'm thinking about regional or bilateral labor agreements, seasonal labor migration schemes that allow people to move freely for work. My fieldwork in Ethiopia really allowed me to see how rural communities were coping with drought. And the most effective way to assist these communities is often by widening access to migration, and particularly labor migration as a climate adaptation strategy. So migration is often framed as a sign that adaptation has failed. But more often, households will use migration to diversify their incomes to enhance their resilience to environmental or economic shocks. And so in this regard, labor markets and the policies that govern them are fundamental, are huge in shaping how people respond to climate migration. And it's also maybe if I could touch on the new Australia-Tuvalu Accord. Yeah, so this new accord, it creates a pathway for Tuvalu citizens to move to Australia as the threat of sea level rise worsens. And now, historically in this region, Pacific visa programs have really been tied to labor mobility.

 

 

 

[00:11:54.15] 

None have specifically referenced climate change as an overarching rationale for the visa. So what's distinctive about this is it's actually deliberately framed in the context of climate change and it's not tied to work. And so what this might do is allow people to move who might not otherwise qualify for work or study visas. But these are still really small numbers. Time will tell how well this scheme works in the sense of scale. You know, Australia, this Australia Tuvalu deal, it grants just 280 Islanders a visa each year. But in Contrast, there were 35,000 Pacific Islanders working in Australia under their labor mobility scheme as of February of this year. And also in exchange, you know, Tuvalu agreed that Australia would be its main security partner. And many believe that this arrangement is really motivated by Australia's desire to counter Chinese influence in the Pacific. So I think while it's important and what it potentially signals, there are obviously other motivations at work behind this deal other than just climate justice. And my main point is that the influence of this accord on migration from the Pacific, it really pales in comparison to broader labor migration schemes.

 

 

 

[00:13:09.09] 

So I think we have to be thinking about those as well.

 

 

 

[00:13:14.12] 

I want to talk about the future too, I guess. Does it create problems in terms of modeling future migration if we're having trouble defining what climate migration is?

 

 

 

[00:13:24.20] 

Right?

 

 

 

[00:13:25.03] 

I mean, let's talk about some of the other complexities and complications of this definitional problem.

 

 

 

[00:13:31.01] 

Yeah. I recently led a report for USAID that reviewed different forecasting modeling approaches to being able to predict future climate migration. And we see more and more of these projections of future climate migration that might estimate, you know, a range from hundreds of millions to over a billion. The time horizon might be to 2050 or 2100. And USAID really wanted to know, what should we do with these projections and how should they inform our programming? And long story short, climate migration forecasting is still very much in its infancy. Modeling experts themselves will caution that these numbers are notional at best. And modeling migration is already an exercise fraught with uncertainty. And adding the dimension of climate change only compounds that uncertainty. But again, I think there is this underlying challenge to forecasting migration, and particularly climate migration, that relates to trying to lump together these many different kinds of migration and mobility into one category. So I could give one example from the Groundswell reports, okay.

 

 

 

[00:14:46.15] 

Which is a classic World Bank-led big report led by the World Bank.

 

 

 

[00:14:50.24] 

Influential.

 

 

 

[00:14:51.22] 

Very influential. Yeah. Looking at slow onset factors in particular.

 

 

 

[00:14:55.20] 

Right. Yeah, right. And internal movements. Yes. And it was really kind of this first global picture. They looked at six major world regions, this first global picture of the potential scale of internal climate migration by 2050. And that's. There's this widely circulated figure of 216 million internal climate migrants by 2050. Now they actually took a scenarios based approach. So they were looking at different, you know, more optimistic or pessimistic climate scenarios and development scenarios. And they had quite a while meaning,

 

 

 

[00:15:29.23] 

like if governments do X vs Y vs Z vs blah blah, blah.

 

 

 

[00:15:34.00] 

Yeah, exactly.

 

 

 

[00:15:35.06] 

Okay.

 

 

 

[00:15:36.23] 

And depending on that, there was quite a wide variation and the volumes of migration that they predicted. But somehow this 216 million number really stuck. But I'll tell you a little bit more about the model. So these reports used a gravity model, which in essence it really models future population distributions. So gravity models assume that population size is indicative of the relative attractiveness of a place and this force of attraction will decay with distance. Gravity models don't model migration directly. Instead you run the model with and without climate impacts and then you look at how population distributions differ. And the difference between the population distributions with and without climate impacts is assumed to be driven by climate related migration. So this is how these numbers of climate migrants, that's where it comes from. Now there's all kinds of limitations with this modeling approach and the modelers themselves will readily admit and detail these limitations in their report. But just coming back to this conceptual issue of defining climate migration, I mean, what kind of migration are we talking about when we see this figure of 216 million climate migrants? I think when most people see that term, they tend to assume we're talking about displacement.

 

 

 

[00:16:57.21] 

But the reality is far more complex. Some may be displaced, of course, but it's likely the vast majority of others are going to be moving for work or education or family reunification, as they always have. And still other changes in population distributions are going to be due to changes in fertility or mortality rates that are also affected by climate change, not migration per se. So I think, you know, I think we're really asking the wrong question. We're trying to quantify the wrong thing. I mean, to Groundswell's credit, they made, you know, this is a wonderful foundation for advancing the field of forecasting climate related migration. And modelers are, the field is moving quite quickly, but in my opinion, the way the direction it needs to go really is to recognize that people are already moving all the time for all kinds of reasons, and that every society already has a mobility system. And so what we should be asking is how will climate change impact existing mobility systems? When can we expect displacement? When might we see a rise in seasonal labor migration, migration for education? When might we see more or less voluntary immobility or involuntary immobility?

 

 

 

[00:18:14.21] 

It's really these kinds of questions that we need to ask to design policies, legal pathways that can support the most vulnerable. These are going to be the challenges in the future and, and determine how we seize the opportunities of migration or address the challenges of migration in an era of climate change.

 

 

 

[00:18:34.17] 

I've got a couple of questions about the gap between popular understanding and these kind of nuanced conversations we're having. Because on the one hand, in going with the kind of the future migration forecasting line of thought, I guess I'm curious if there is a concern that this kind of forecasting over exaggerates the number the amount of potential migration, but which could either spark a backlash from certain elements or political elements or, or if there's concern about underestimating future migration, which could paralyze policymakers in some way. But then also on the flip side of that, climate migration as a concept is something that is relatively popularly understood, even if it's not something that like is easily definable from an academic research level. I mean, you yourself are at the Duke Program on climate related migration. This is a term that is in the public discourse, right? What are the challenges with using a term that exists in public discourse but is not properly defined, even if it's popularly understood?

 

 

 

[00:19:39.03] 

If that makes sense.

 

 

 

[00:19:39.22] 

So there's kind of two questions in there. You can kind of take them as you see fit.

 

 

 

[00:19:44.12] 

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think the benefits are generally that it brings greater attention to a very real issue. You know, climate change is going to impact patterns of human migration. The way we might be approaching that is overly simplistic. But, you know, we do need more attention to this research area. And I do think in cases of extreme drought or natural disasters, it's really a climate justice issue to make explicit this link between climate change and displacement in particular, and that for those nations that are the most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions to really take responsibility for the humanitarian crises that follow in the wake of climate change. As we all know by now, the populations most vulnerable to climate change are those who are the least responsible for it. Those are some of the reasons why I think it matters. I also see it among students here. There's a real interest and desire to understand climate migration better. And I think you can get so caught up in sort of breaking down the semantics of it that you can miss just the power of this concept that readily resonates with people, and people can kind of, it provides an entry point into a conversation.

 

 

 

[00:21:03.10] 

But I do think the challenge you touched on in your question about well intentioned activists who might use the Threat of mass climate migration as a kind of fear based tactic to motivate action on climate change. That's a real challenge. And this can have counterproductive impacts. Gives the impression that migration is completely out of control. It leads to greater emphasis on border security enforcement. I think Hein de Haas has spoken with you about that on this podcast and I think he's certainly right. We know that those who are the most directly impacted by climate change are often those who move relatively short distances are not at all. And I think that touches on another challenge that I see, that I wonder in a way how this could enter more into popular discourse and that really relates to what climate migration obscures and in particular this question of immobility. So we know that some of the most adverse consequences of climate change may come in the form of reduced mobility. What some researchers are talking about in terms of trapped populations. And I think Caroline Zickgraf wrote a wonderful article which I can plug for you, which covers this debate quite well.

 

 

 

[00:22:22.21] 

Yeah, yeah, she was on the podcast as well.

 

 

 

[00:22:24.12] 

Yes. Oh fantastic. Yeah, yeah. So you know, Richard Black and his colleagues, they noted over a decade ago that there's this inverse relationship between vulnerability to climate threats and the ability to move away from them. And so some of the most vulnerable groups, those who have low levels of income, education, the elderly, those with disabilities, they have less resources to move. They're more likely to be left exposed to the continued impacts of climate change, potentially descend deeper into poverty. So I think analysts, when they focus solely on climate migration, they risk overshadowing this climate related immobility which is a really urgent humanitarian and a development concern. And then of course there's also these questions of related to people not wanting to leave places that are experiencing climate stress, strong feelings of place attachment. What we talk about in terms of voluntary immobility, the kind of socio, cultural, political, psychological ties to place that can override sort of outsider assessments of the benefits of moving. And I'm particularly don't want to leave their home.

 

 

 

[00:23:32.08] 

Yeah, they ancestors were there. This is a big thing, especially in the Pacific islands. You're talking about Tuvalu previously. People don't want to leave their homelands.

 

 

 

[00:23:39.12] 

Right, yeah, sorry, exactly, exactly. And I think that's true not just for indigenous populations, but everywhere. Place attachment, place based ties are explain, you know, a lot of the voluntary mobility we see around the world. And my own research has explored this category that I call acquiescent immobility. And here it's people who might lack the capability to move, but they also don't want to move anyway. So it's not necessarily a voluntary choice to stay in place, but they still don't want to. One explanation for this, among others that I think is quite interesting, is just people never really considering migration and not really entering into the equation. We tend to assume people develop a desire to migrate or have a conviction to stay. But there's a lot of people who just never really meaningfully consider migration. And so what do we do with that? I think these different forms of climate related immobility, they raise questions and concerns for policymakers that go far beyond the management of climate migration.

 

 

 

[00:24:49.04] 

We're almost out of time, but we talked about a lot of different things. Climate related immobility, climate migration, voluntary immobility, trapped populations, migration. In the context of climate change, I guess how is there a pithy phrase that you have or a nice term that we might use to replace or supplement climate migration as a concept? I mean, what is the overarching, what language should we be using that we are not using?

 

 

 

[00:25:19.22] 

Yeah, so many academics would advocate for using the term climate mobility instead of climate migration. The idea is that climate mobility highlights the multiplicity of movements that can occur in response to climate change, its relationship with historic patterns of movement, the interactions between mobility and immobility. But you really have to do your research to know how academics are using this term climate mobility. I mean, at face value, it doesn't seem very different from climate migration. It's just replacing migration with the broader term mobility. So it still faces this challenge that climate is the primary adjective. Climate migration, climate mobility. It gives this idea that this is, you know, climate is the predominant factor influencing movement. I think so much of the challenge that we face relates to this complicated intersection between climate and other political, economic, cultural, demographic, even other environmental factors that are not related to climate change. And these other factors can have much greater impacts on migration trends. That's where we see a lot of these issues. As you mentioned, at Duke we started this new program that focuses on the intersection of climate change, adaptation, migration. We spent a long time thinking about what to call it.

 

 

 

[00:26:41.11] 

We landed on the term climate related migration. The Duke Program on Climate-Related Migration. This was really. It lets us explore the different kinds of migration impacted by climate change. But the directness or the indirectness of climate change impacts can vary. It's more clunky, climate related migration, but it is a bit more accurate to capture what we're trying to do. I think climate related migration or climate related mobility, a lot of research agendas can fall within that at that intersection of climate change and human mobility. And that's what we're concerned with at Duke. But when it comes to designing policies and legal categories, I'm not sure climate related migration really helps because I just don't think it's possible to capture all forms of climate related migration within a single category. And so when we think about what terms we use, I think we need to go back to the terms we're already using to describe different kinds of movement. Labor migration, student migration, family migration, refugee or survival migration. Of course these terms have to continue to be refined, and they will be. But realizing that climate change is going to leave its mark on all these different kinds of movement, instead of treating it as a separate category, I think we need to instead think of these different kinds of movement and ask about what will the impact of climate change be?

 

 

 

[00:28:07.11] 

Just to wrap it up, last year's IPCC report found that between 3.3 and 3.6 billion people are living in countries with a high vulnerability to climate change. Migration within and from these places over the coming decades is going to be as mixed and messy as migration has always been, and we need to be prepared for that.

 

 

 

[00:28:32.11] 

That's probably going to be the end of our time, but this was super interesting, super fun. Kerilyn, thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed you taking a couple minutes to speak with me today.

 

 

 

[00:28:41.22] 

Thanks so much. I enjoyed the conversation as well. I appreciate you having me.

 

 

 

[00:28:47.02] 

Kerilyn Schewel is co director of, as she said, the Duke University Program on Climate Climate-Related Migration. She's also a lecturing fellow at Duke's Center for International Development. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Changing Climate Changing Migration. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you can hear all our new episodes as soon as they come out. Changing Climate, Changing Migration is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. If you've missed an episode like the conversations with Hein de Haas or Caroline Zickgraf that we mentioned, you can check out our archives to see what else we've been talking about. Some of the conversations range from more specific ones like those we had today, or really more accessible generalist overviews like our recent Climate Migration 101 episode. All the episodes are online at migrationpolicy.org/podcasts. And while you're there, you can find information about other podcasts from MPI, including World of Migration, in which our experts probe cutting edge issues and information. International movement, such as why travel documents are so essential but so hard for refugees to obtain. And if you want to find additional perspective on climate change and migration, you should check out the special collection of articles from our Migration Information Source.

 

 

 

[00:30:04.07] 

Read them online at migrationpolicy.org/climate. The Migration Information Source newsletter is your ticket to the latest and most innovative migration analysis. It's available free twice per month, and you can sign up online at migrationinformation.org. Send me an email at [email protected]. I'd love to hear your comments, questions and ideas for new episodes. Yoseph Hamid produced this episode with assistance from Lisa Dixon. An editorial input from Michelle Mittelstadt. Our theme music is Touch by Patrick Patrikios. My name is Julian Hattem. Thank you again.