II. Methodological issues Environment & Migration

Qualitative approaches

Migrants and Refugees A fundamental distinction  Initially, the distinction between refugees and migrants has to do with the degree of coercion of the migration.  Refugees and migrants are entitled to different levels of protection:  Refugees benefit from an international protection regime  Migrants depend upon the receiving state  But ‘migrants’ also include:  Forced migrants who are not refugees  Internal migrants

A continuum rather than a clear-cut distinction

Refugees or migrants?  Initially, the distinction between refugees and migrants has to do with the degree of coercion of the migration.  Refugees and migrants are entitled to different levels of protection:  Refugees benefit from an international protection regime  Migrants depend upon the receiving state  Distinction is increasingly blurred:  Voluntary migration often include an element of constraint, and vice versa  People travel in groups, which can include both forced and voluntary migrants – ‘prima facie refugees’.  This is especially complicated in the case of environmental migration, often considered as a ‘grey zone’

Issue of the definition  Difficult  Definitional uncertainty: mostly internal migration, mingles with other factors  Political uncertainty: what will be the future of climate policies?  Sociological uncertainty: how will people react to environmental changes?  Controversial  Alarmists vs sceptics  A broad definition invites large numbers  Wide variety of terms (often misnomers)  Important  Policy-wise  Allows to forecast numbers

Research methods  Descriptive and predictive methods  Identifications of regions at risk (‘hotspots’)  Vulnerability analysis  Induced migratory movements  Analytical methods  Questions the relative weight of different migration drivers  Sociological and empirical methods

Descriptive and predictive methods  Often linked to natural sciences  Studies of environmental impacts  Mapping  Quite deterministic  Allows for quantitative data, but their reliability is contested.

Source: NASA

Sea Level Rise – Mekong Delta

The distribution of net population displacement over the twenty-first century by region assuming no protection for a 0.5 m (grey bars) and a 2.0 m (black bars) rise in sea level. Nicholls R J et al. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 2011;369:

Analytical methods  Usually revolves around the same questions:  Why did people migrate ?  Relative weight of different migration drivers.

A theoretical framework Source: Black et al. 2011

1. Ecological inference  Seeks to reproduce individual behaviours on the basis of collective observations.  Relies on the idea that there is a correlation between a region’s environmental patterns and migratory patterns.  Multi-variable analysis, but two issues:  Which variables to consider?  Inference limits

2. Household surveys  Surveys need to administered to large samples  Can also yield quantitative data  Issues:  Surveys don’t allow for a refined understanding of the problems.  Capture the situation at a specific time, but little historical perspective.  Perceptions of the environment are very different from one individual to the other.

3. Time series  Similar to ecological inference, but devotes more attention to the time dimension, at the expense of the space dimension.  Depends on statistical data on migration, which are often scarce and/or incomplete.  Which control variables?

 Gombélédougou (Burkina Faso). En rouge les nouvelles habitations ( )  Gombélédougou (Burkina Faso). New settlements ( ) are in red.

4. Multi-level analyses  Combine :  Environmental data  Household surveys  Time series  Practical issues:  Difficult to conduct (just one so far, in Burkina Faso)  Different conceptions and divisions of space

5. Ethnographic methods  Most frequently used (ex: EACH-FOR)  Use qualitative interviews with migrants and experts  Allow for a refined understanding of the ongoing processes, but do not allow for  Realistic predictions  Quantitative data

A review of empirical research Source: Obokata et al. 2014