Internal Displacement, International Migration, and Environmental Change

Abstract:

Global concern over climate change has alerted scholars to new forms of human migration in response to environmental changes, including short-distance internal migration and long-distance international migration. However, linkages between climate change and migration are far from straightforward. Understanding migration in response to environmental change can benefit from literature on migration in general, particularly the finding that migration often builds on past migration traditions as migrants construct social networks between sending and receiving destinations. Other findings from the migration literature are also relevant, such as the roles that socioeconomic status, household composition, gender and age play in migration and how migration adds to household livelihood constellations, diversifies risk, and enables access to social resources and ecosystem services. While a combination of factors like these accounts for both internal displacement and international migration, differentiating among factors that differentiate the internally displaced from international migration has proven difficult. Using a mixed-methods approach, including literature review, data analysis, and modeling, we attempt to accomplish this with reference to internal displacement in and international migration from Somalia.