Environmental Degradation, Migration, and the Potential for Violent Conflict

Abstract

This chapter examines the alleged negative feedback dynamic between environmental degradation, migration, and conflict and finds that it contains numerous and complex relationships. Some are conflictual, others are not. Recognizing this complexity, the study argues that typological analyses can help to move the current research debate in this area forward. Focusing first on the links between environmental degradation and outmigration, the study shows that they are complex, uncertain, and difficult to detect. Initial classification of types of movements into distress migration versus more routinized migration helps to sort out the consequences. Whether environmentally related migration produces conflict in the receiving area depends also on conditions in the host community, particularly the role of the state. Migration can contribute to violent social strife, and - on closer examination - the cases of this effect usually cited in the literature reveal that the state played a critical, negative role. Some conflicts also take the form of systematic exploitation of the migrants ('structural violence'). This outcome is not adequately represented, but rather distorted, if one adopts a security paradigm for the study of environmentally related migration. The security paradigm also obscures the fact that migration can be an instrument to enhance welfare in the receiving area as well among the migrants.