The Determinants of Environmental Migrants' Conflict Perception
Open accessAbstract
Migration is likely to be a key factor linking climate change and conflict. However, our understanding of the factors behind and consequences of migration is surprisingly limited. We take this shortcoming as a motivation for our research and study the relationship between environmental migration and conflict at the micro level. In particular, we focus on environmental migrants' conflict perceptions . We contend that variation in migrants' conflict perception can be explained by the type of environmental event people experienced in their former home, whether gradual, and long-term or sudden-onset, short-term environmental changes. We develop this argument before quantitatively analyzing newly collected micro-level data on intra-state migration from five developing countries. The results emphasize that migrants who experienced gradual, long-term environmental events in their former homes are more likely to perceive conflict in their new location than those having experienced sudden, short-term environmental events. These findings are in line with our theoretical argument that environmental migrants who suffer from environmentally induced grievances are ultimately more likely to perceive conflict and challenges in their new locations.
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Few empirical studies seek to evaluate empirical evidence for the entire climate-migration-conflict link.
“Few empirical studies seek to evaluate empirical evidence for the entire climate-migration-conflict link (although see[88][89][90][91].”
From Vicious Circles: Violence, Vulnerability, and Climate Change (2021) · cites this paper as [89]
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- Authors
- Koubi, V., Böhmelt, T., Spilker, G., & Schaffer, L.
- Venue
- International Organization
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2018
- Volume
- 72
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 905-936
- ISSN
- 0020-8183 (ISSN-L)
- 1531-5088
- OpenAlex
- W2742596485
- Cited by
- 96
- References
- 17
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 23 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 31.86
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- International Organization (publishedVersion)
- Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- Open Access at Essex (University of Essex) (acceptedVersion)
- KOPS (University of Konstanz) (submittedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- BORIS (University Library Bern) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- ETH Zürich Research Collection
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Transboundary Water Resource Management
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Political Conflict and Governance
- Keywords
- environmental migration, conflict perception, climate change and conflict, intra-state migration, developing countries
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