Introduction: Environment, Migration, and Inequality—A Complex Dynamic

Abstract

Migration is one of many ways by which people have adapted, and will continue to adapt, to the rapid environmental changes of the Anthropocene. Scholarship on environmental migration has evolved from atheoretical push–pull descriptions of environmental refugees toward increasingly systematic investigations of how migration emerges from complex interplays of cultural, economic, social, and environmental processes. In recent years, environmental migration has often been conceptualized in relationship to human vulnerability to environmental change more generally (especially climate change) and human security. A next stage in the evolution of this scholarship is emerging, in which scholars are examining in greater detail the relationship between environmental migration, socio-economic inequality, and the capability of people to pursue their chosen livelihoods. This chapter traces these stages in the evolution of environmental migration scholarship, and presents a generic model of how social and economic inequality can be both a stimulus for environmental migration and a consequence of it. A short case study of the migration outcomes of Hurricane Katrina is presented to illustrate the workings of the model. An overview of the subsequent chapters of the book is provided, showing how each advances our understanding of the relationship of environmental migration and inequality through new conceptual, empirical, methodological, legal, and/or policy insights.