# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Explainer: Immigrants and the U.S. Economy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The question of whether immigration represents a net cost or a net benefit to the U.S. economy has been a major source of contention, even as the research literature and thinking among economists has been quite clear. A strong body of research and consensus by most economists finds that immigration, on balance, is a net positive for the U.S. economy. This explainer walks through the issues.

# data[].attributes.headline
Net Migration Rate (everyone should start here!)

# data[].attributes.subject
Net Migration Rate (everyone should start here!)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Net migration: Frequently asked questions - Migration Observatory

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This commentary answers some frequently asked questions about net migration to the UK.

# data[].attributes.headline
Interactive World Migration Report (challenging source)

# data[].attributes.subject
Interactive World Migration Report (challenging source)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Portal aims to serve as a single access point to timely, comprehensive migration statistics and reliable information about migration data globally. The site is designed for policy makers, national statistics officers, journalists and the general publi

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The 154-page report, “‘Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged’: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza,” examines how Israeli authorities’ conduct has led to the displacement of over 90 percent of the population of Gaza—1.9 million Palestinians—and the widespread destruction of much of Gaza over the last 13 months. Israeli forces have carried out deliberate, controlled demolitions of homes and civilian infrastructure, including in areas where they have apparent aims of creating “buffer zones” and security “corridors,” from which Palestinians are likely to be permanently displaced. Contrary to claims by Israeli officials, their actions do not comply with the laws of war.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In October 2023, the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a massive surprise assault on southern Israel, the deadliest single attack on Israelis in history. Israel's subsequent declaration of war with the intent to destroy Hamas has further worsened an already dire situation in the Gaza Strip, where more than two million Palestinians lived prior to the conflict. International efforts to negotiate a full humanitarian cease-fire have failed as the war's death toll has climbed.

During their assault, Hamas militants killed around 1,200 Israelis, about 70 percent of them civilians, and took roughly 240 hostages. While Hamas freed more than 100 hostages under a weeklong cease-fire deal in November, it still holds some 136 people captive, though an estimated 32 of them have died, according to an assessment conducted by the Israeli military and reported by the New York Times. In a January 2024 ruling, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to contain the civilian death toll in Gaza, though it did not issue an order demanding a cease-fire.

How bad is the humanitarian situation in Gaza?

The Gaza Strip, a small territory of about 139 square miles (360 square kilometers), or roughly the size of the city of Detroit, was already experiencing a severe humanitarian crisis before the current hostilities broke out. As a result of a sixteen-year blockade by Israel, more than half of all Gazans depend on international assistance for basic services. Additionally, some 80 percent of Gaza's residents are considered refugees under international law, and Palestinians overall compose the largest stateless community in the world.

Israel's military operations in response to Hamas's attack have resulted in "colossal human suffering," UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in January. As of February, Israel's retaliation has killed 27,748 people [PDF] and injured more than 66,800 others, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. (These figures could not be independently verified, but outside sources have also reported similar numbers.) More than 120 journalists and media workers have also been killed, as well as over 150 UN employees, the highest number of aid workers killed in any conflict in UN history.

Israel maintains a complete siege of Gaza, cutting off electricity and water, and supplies of food and medicine remain scarce. A December report [PDF] by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, an initiative composed of independent international food security and nutrition experts, warned that an estimated more than 90 percent of Gaza's population is facing crisis levels of food insecurity. Without fuel, meanwhile, Gaza's only power station has gone dark. The lack of electricity has shut down desalination and waste-water treatment plants, further compromising access to safe drinking water.

Israel's aerial bombardments have demolished neighborhoods, schools, and mosques; satellite imagery analyzed by the United Nations shows that approximately 30 percent of Gaza's total structures have been destroyed or damaged. (Similar satellite imagery analysis by the BBC puts this number higher, at between 50 and 61 percent.) The Israeli military has said that Hamas has placed portions of its command network and military tunnel system below civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, which Israeli strikes have hit.

Gaza's health system, which was reported to have collapsed in November 2023, remains crippled, with hospitals running extremely low on rationed fuel reserves and medical supplies. Northern Gaza's two major hospitals have long greatly exceeded their capacity, and Nasser Hospital, the largest functioning medical facility in southern Gaza, is now unable to provide critical medical care. Health authorities have also warned of the growing risk of disease outbreaks as health conditions rapidly decline.

What are the refuge options for Palestinians in Gaza?

Gazans' options for refuge are severely limited. As of January, some 75 percent of the territory's population of more than two million have been displaced. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled bombing in the north, cramming inside the southern city of Rafah, considered the last designated safe zone for those seeking shelter. However, Israel's defense minister announced in February that the Israeli military plans to expand its ground campaign into Rafah, now the strip's most populous city. Aid groups say such a move could lead to a large-scale loss of life and place more pressure on neighboring countries to take in refugees, though Israeli officials have said they will coordinate with Egypt before any ground offensive takes place to evacuate displaced Palestinians northward.

Egypt, which shares the Rafah border crossing with Gaza and already hosts some 390,000 refugees and asylum seekers, primarily from around the region, is the only viable outlet left. The Egyptian government was initially reluctant to open the crossing following the outbreak of war. Since then, Israel has allowed aid trucks carrying water, food, fuel, and medical supplies to enter Gaza. (UN agencies have said that aid delivery has been hindered by ongoing fighting, a slow vetting process, and the lack of crossings into Gaza.) A few hundred foreign nationals and injured civilians have also been allowed to flee Gaza via the border crossing, which has temporarily closed several times due to Israeli strikes.

How are humanitarian aid organizations responding?

In November 2023, the United Nations launched an updated $481 million flash appeal to address the needs of people in Gaza and the West Bank; as of December, nearly half of total funding requirements had been pledged. In Gaza, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) are helping to provide essential goods and services, such as medical supplies, fuel, and emergency assistance. However, the Joe Biden administration announced in January that it is temporarily suspending new funding to UNRWA following allegations by Israel that a dozen agency employees participated in Hamas's October 7 attack; many other countries, including Canada, Germany, and Japan, have also suspended their donations.

Several other major organizations, including the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement-which comprises the Palestine Red Crescent Society-and Doctors Without Borders, are also supplying humanitarian aid. As the fighting continues, international calls for a humanitarian cease-fire have grown; in December, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the immediate cessation of hostilities; ten countries, including the United States, voted against the measure.

Recommended Resources

This article by CFR Senior Fellow David J. Scheffer explains humanitarian law in the context of the Israel-Hamas war.

At this CFR media briefing, panelists discuss international law and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

The Center for Preventive Action tracks the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

CFR's World101 library explores the history behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Will Merrow created the graphic for this In Brief.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Israel-Hamas War: The Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
International calls for a cease-fire are mounting as the humanitarian situation in Gaza deteriorates rapidly amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Tensions between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Myanmar's Rakhine State have escalated dramatically since late August 2017. A series of attacks by a group of Rohingya militants calling itself the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army ( ARSA) on military and police outposts killed more than seventy people, including twelve Burmese security forces personnel. In response, the military launched a brutal crackdown on Rohingya villages, causing over seven hundred thousand people to flee across the border to Bangladesh since August 2017. Widespread reports indicate indiscriminate killings and burning of Rohingya villages, escalating to the point that the UN Human Rights Commissioner called the situation in Rakhine State "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing." The violence has led to a growing humanitarian crisis in neighboring Bangladesh, where nearly one million Rohingya now reside in refugee camps along the border.

This outburst of violence by the military comes after a similar attack on a security post along the Bangladeshi border in October 2016 killed nine police officers. The army responded to that attack with a month-long crackdown on unarmed Muslim civilians, causing more than one thousand civilian deaths and driving tens of thousands more to flee their homes in search of safety.

After winning Myanmar's first competitive national election in more than twenty-five years and taking office in March 2016, the National League for Democracy party (unofficially headed by State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi) has continually failed to address the status of the Rohingya people, who were not allowed to vote in the election. A national peace conference was held in August 2016, aimed at ending decades of fighting between the military and a number of armed ethnic groups, but Rohingya representatives were not invited to attend. That same month, Aung San Suu Kyi announced the creation of a nine-person commission, headed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, to review and offer recommendations to address the tensions in Rakhine. The commission delivered its final report in late August 2017, just days before the latest outbreak of violence. Aung San Suu Kyi has continued to face criticism over a failure to address or acknowledge the Rohingya issue.
Background
The Rohingya, a highly persecuted Muslim group numbering over one million, face discrimination both from their neighbors and their nation, and are not considered citizens by Myanmar's government. Buddhist nationalist groups, including the MaBaTha and the anti-Muslim 969 movement, regularly call for boycotts of Muslim shops, the expulsion of Muslims from Myanmar, and attacks on Muslim communities. After two waves of violence, reprisals, and riots in June and October of 2012 intensified the century-old conflict in the predominantly Buddhist country, more than one hundred thousand Muslim Rohingyas were internally displaced and hundreds killed.

There is little indication that addressing the Rohingya issue will become a priority any time soon for Myanmar's government, which has focused instead on establishing a new relationship with the military and addressing multiple ongoing insurgencies. The military signed a cease-fire with several armed ethnic groups in October 2015, but some major groups-including two of the largest militias, the United Wa State Army and Kachin Independence Army -continue to fight the government. While the cease-fire agreement was a potential step towards peace in Myanmar, it failed to finalize a framework for a new balance of power between the central government and local authorities in the restive borderlands or require ethnic groups to disarm.
Concerns
As the U.S.-Myanmar relationship warms, disagreements over human rights issues will remain a divisive factor. However, Myanmar's stability is increasingly important to U.S. interests given Myanmar's strategic importance in Southeast Asia, vast natural resources, and emerging democratic government.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar | Global Conflict Tracker

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Tensions between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Myanmar's Rakhine State have escalated dramatically since late August 2017. A series of attacks by a group of Rohingya militants calling itself the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army ( ARSA) on military and police outposts killed more than seventy people, including twelve Burmese security forces personnel.

# data[].attributes.headline
What the data says about immigrants in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.subject
What the data says about immigrants in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After more than 50 years of rapid growth, the nation's immigrant population is now in decline.

In January 2025, 53.3 million immigrants lived in the United States - the largest number ever recorded. In the ensuing months, however, more immigrants left the country or were deported than arrived. By June, the country's foreign-born population had shrunk by more than a million people, marking its first decline since the 1960s.

A new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data finds that, as of June 2025:

51.9 million immigrants lived in the U.S.

15.4% of all U.S. residents were immigrants, down from a recent historic high of 15.8%.

19% of the U.S. labor force were immigrants, down from 20% and by over 750,000 workers since January.

Starting in mid-2024, several policy changes have affected the U.S. immigrant population:

How we did this

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to answer common questions about immigration to the United States and the U.S. immigrant population. The immigrant or foreign-born population consists of people born outside of the United States or its territories who are not U.S. citizens at birth.

Estimates for 2025 are from Pew Research Center tabulations of the Census Bureau's monthly Current Population Surveys, accessed through IPUMS. The Current Population Survey's June 2025 estimate was the most recent available as of July 31. Note that the recent downward trend in the estimated U.S. immigrant population may in part be due to technical reasons such as declining CPS survey participation among immigrants.

Data on characteristics and legal status of U.S. immigrants in 2023 comes from Center analysis of augmented and supplemented 2023 American Community Survey data ( IPUMS). The analysis also includes historical data from decennial censuses.

The estimates presented in this research for 2023 are the Center's latest. The 2023 ACS was supplemented to take into account the Census Bureau's 2024 revisions to their population estimates based on increased levels of net international migration. Read the methodology of this report for more details.

Comparative data on other countries around the world comes from the United Nations' migrant stock and overall population estimates for 2024.

Pew Research Center regularly publishes research on the U.S. immigrant population and international migration trends. Here are answers to some key questions about U.S. immigrants, based on the most recent detailed data available. (In some cases, this data is from mid-2023.)

How many people in the U.S. are immigrants?

As of June 2025, 51.9 million immigrants lived in the U.S., making up 15.4% of the nation's population. This was down from January, when there were a record 53.3 million immigrants in the U.S., accounting for 15.8% of the country's population - the highest percentage on record.

Even as the nation's immigrant population has declined in recent months - a change that may be partly artificial due to a declining survey response rate among immigrants - the U.S. is home to more immigrants than any other country.

As of 2024, the second-largest immigrant population is in Germany, numbering around 17 million, according to the latest estimates from the United Nations.

While the U.S. is home to the largest number of immigrants, dozens of countries (including Germany) have a higher proportion of immigrants in their populations than the U.S. does. In neighboring Canada, for example, immigrants account for 22% of the population. And in the United Arab Emirates, about three-quarters of all residents were born elsewhere.

Where are U.S. immigrants from?

As of mid-2023 - the latest year for which detailed data is available - more than 11 million U.S. residents were born in Mexico, representing 22% of all immigrants nationally. The second-largest immigrant group was from India (3.2 million, or 6%), followed by China (3 million, or 6%), the Philippines (2.1 million, or 4%) and Cuba (1.7 million, or 3%).

About half of all U.S. immigrants (52%, or 26.7 million people) were born in Latin America. In addition to the millions of migrants from Mexico and Cuba, more than a million hail from El Salvador (1.6 million), Guatemala (1.4 million), the Dominican Republic (1.4 million), Colombia (1.2 million), Honduras (1.1 million) and Venezuela (1.1 million).

After Latin America, Asia is the second-largest region of birth for U.S. immigrants. In 2023, around a quarter of all immigrants (27%, or nearly 14 million people) were born in Asia.

As of 2023, there were about 11 million immigrants from every other world region combined, accounting for 22% of the U.S. foreign-born population: 10% were born in Europe, 5% in sub-Saharan Africa, 4% in the Middle East-North Africa region, and 2% in Canada or another North American country (a category that includes Bermuda and some smaller countries).

How have immigrants' origins changed in recent years?

An unprecedented number of immigrants - more than 11 million - arrived in the U.S. between 2020 and 2025. That included more than 3 million in 2023 alone, the largest annual total ever recorded, according to a Center analysis of government data sources.

Alongside this increase, immigrants' origin regions have also shifted, with a growing share coming from South America and Europe and a declining share coming from Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Between 2021 and 2023, 20% of newly arrived immigrants were from South America, up from 13% in the period between 2015 and 2019. Another 12% of new arrivals between 2021 and 2023 were from Europe or Canada, up from 9% in the earlier period.

At the same time, 24% of new arrivals between 2021 and 2023 were from South and East Asia, down from 29% in 2015-19. And 5% of new arrivals between 2021 and 2023 involved people from sub-Saharan Africa, down from 8% in 2015-19.

Mexico was the largest origin country for immigrants who arrived between 2021 and 2023. About 11% of immigrants who came to the U.S. during this period were born in Mexico. Rounding out the top five countries of origin for immigrants who arrived during this period were India (8%), Venezuela (7%), Cuba (6%) and Colombia (5%).

Throughout this period, unauthorized immigrants accounted for most new immigrant arrivals, with many coming from Central and South America.

How have immigration flows changed over the longer term?

Since 1965, more than 76 million immigrants have come to the U.S.

Before then, U.S. immigration law favored immigrants from Northern and Western Europe and mostly barred immigration from Asia. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act opened up immigration from Asia and Latin America. The Immigration Act of 1990 further increased legal immigration and allowed immigrants from more countries to enter the U.S. legally.

Immigration flows after 1965 have been larger and come from different and more countries than earlier flows:

From 1840 to 1889, about 90% of U.S. immigrants came from Europe, including about 70% from Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Almost 90% of the immigrants who arrived from 1890 to 1919 also came from Europe. But their origins were largely different as nearly 60% came from Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia-Poland.

Since 1965, about half of U.S. immigrants have come from Latin America, with about a quarter from Mexico alone. About another quarter have come from Asia. Large numbers have come from China, India and the Philippines.

Today, Mexico remains the largest origin country among U.S. immigrants. However, immigration from Mexico has slowed since 2007, and the Mexican-born population in the U.S. has since dropped. The Mexican share of the U.S. immigrant population declined from 29% in 2010 to 22% in 2023.

What is the legal status of immigrants in the U.S.?

As of 2023, 46% of immigrants were naturalized U.S. citizens. Nearly a quarter (23%) were lawful permanent residents, often referred to as "green card holders," and another 4% were lawful temporary residents who were permitted to stay in the U.S. for a limited period of time, usually for work or study. The remaining immigrants in the U.S. fell into the "unauthorized" category and constituted 27% of all U.S. immigrants.
Related: U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Population Reached a Record
14 Million in 2023
Who are unauthorized immigrants?

Unauthorized immigrants are those without full legal status. As of 2023, this population hit a new record high of 14 million. Within this group, about 6 million (or a little more than 40%) had some form of temporary protection from deportation, with some also having a permit to work in the U.S.

Among the unauthorized immigrants with some deportation protections were 2.6 million asylum applicants; 700,000 people who entered the U.S. legally after receiving parole; 700,000 victims of crime and violence; 650,000 people with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a program available to immigrants from countries facing war, natural disasters and other crises; and 600,000 immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children and are enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Another 1 million migrants encountered U.S. Border Patrol before being released into the U.S., typically with an order to appear in immigration court. These immigrants have had more limited protections from deportation while their cases are being resolved.

Immigrants in these groups are included as part of the "unauthorized" population because their deportation protections are temporary and can quickly change. For example, the Trump administration has rescinded deportation protections and work permits for about 500,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who entered the U.S. legally.

The remaining unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. as of 2023 (about 8 million) had neither legal status nor temporary protection from deportation.

This year, policy and enforcement changes likely contributed to a decline in the unauthorized immigrant population between January and June. Border crossings have fallen further, reaching lows not seen since the 1960s. Immigration arrests and deportations have increased. And a growing number of immigrants have lost deportation protections, with some likely leaving the country voluntarily.

Do all lawful immigrants choose to become U.S. citizens?

Immigrants who are lawful permanent residents and meet other requirements can apply to become U.S. citizens through the naturalization process. During the 2024 fiscal year, 818,500 immigrants became U.S. citizens through naturalization.

Millions of lawful permanent residents are currently eligible to become U.S. citizens but have not applied for naturalization.

How many immigrants are working in the U.S.?

Between January and June 2025, the number of immigrants living and working in the U.S. declined. But recent figures by legal status are not yet available.

In 2023, the most recent year with complete data, 33 million immigrants were in the U.S. workforce, including about 23 million lawful immigrants and 10 million unauthorized immigrants.

Nearly one-in-five workers (19%) were immigrants in 2023, up from 15% two decades earlier. This share increased steadily since at least 1995, when they made up 12% of the labor force.

About 2% of adult immigrants, including noncitizens, are currently serving in the military or served in the past.

Where do most U.S. immigrants live?

In 2023, most of the nation's 51.8 million immigrants lived in just four states. California was home to 11.3 million immigrants, or 28.4% of the national total. Texas had the second-largest immigrant population with over 6 million foreign-born residents, followed by Florida (5.4 million) and New York (5.0 million).

A majority of immigrants lived in only 12 metropolitan areas. The New York City metropolitan area was home to the largest population, accounting for 13% of all immigrants. The Los Angeles and Miami metro areas also had particularly large immigrant populations, with 9% and 6% of all U.S. immigrants, respectively.

How educated are immigrants?

Overall, immigrants in the U.S. had lower levels of educational attainment than their U.S.-born counterparts in 2023.

24% of immigrant adults ages 25 and older had not completed high school, compared with 7% of the U.S.-born population.

However, immigrants were as likely as the U.S. born to have a bachelor's degree or higher (36% each).

Educational attainment among immigrants varies widely based on their region of origin:

Only 11% of Central American immigrants hold a bachelor's degree or higher. By comparison, 36% of U.S.-born adults have this level of education.

Immigrants from Asia, Europe, the Middle East-North Africa region, sub-Saharan Africa and other North American countries are more likely than the U.S. born to have at least a bachelor's degree.

How well do immigrants speak English?

About half of immigrants ages 5 and older (52%) are proficient English speakers, meaning they either speak English very well or speak only English at home.

Again, there is a wide range of English proficiency depending on where immigrants were born:

The overwhelming majority of immigrants from elsewhere in North America (97%) or from Oceania (83%) - primarily Australia and New Zealand - are proficient English speakers.

Large shares of immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa (75%), South Asia (72%) and Europe (72%) also are English proficient.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, only about one-in-three immigrants who were born in Central America (31%) are proficient in English.

English proficiency is more common among immigrants who arrived in the U.S. before 2000 than among those who entered the country later. Some 57% of immigrants who came to the U.S. before 2000 are proficient English speakers, compared with 47% who arrived in 2010 or later.
Note: This is an update of an analysis originally published May 3, 2017.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What the data says about immigrants in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As of June 2025, the country's foreign-born population had shrunk by more than a million people, marking its first decline since the 1960s.

# data[].attributes.headline
Thailand gives Myanmar refugees the right to work

# data[].attributes.subject
Thailand gives Myanmar refugees the right to work

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Some 81,000 forcibly displaced people - largely Karen and Karenni, as well as other ethnic groups - are hosted in temporary shelters along the Thai-Myanmar border where they have been living in the camps for decades.

Nearly half the refugee population were born under canvas, where displaced families have largely depended on humanitarian assistance.

'Turning point'

UNHCR 's Representative in Thailand, Tammi Sharpe, described the Government's decision as a major "turning point."

She said it would not only help refugees support themselves but also benefit local economies and strengthen Thailand's long-term growth.

" By unlocking the potential of these individuals, Thailand is not only upholding humanitarian principles but also making a strategic investment in its own future," Ms. Sharpe said.

Although the new resolution covers a limited number, the UN agency said it would continue to advocate for wider refugee inclusion - offering support to the Thai Government in rolling out the new policy.

Aid cuts

The move comes at a time when aid budgets for displaced people worldwide are facing severe cuts.

For the UN agency, Thailand's move could set a regional precedent for sustainable, rights-based refugee policies - and serve as a model for countries facing similar challenges, UNHCR said.

According to agency, $25.4 million is needed in 2025 to ensure operations covered by the Thailand-based international office is sustained - which also oversees operations in Cambodia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic and Viet Nam.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Thailand grants work rights to long-term refugees from Myanmar, UN welcomes resolution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A new resolution by the Thai Government that will allow long-staying refugees from Myanmar to work legally in the country was welcomed on Tuesday by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, as a significant boost to the national economy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Iraq unveils historic migration plan to boost development and stability

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Iraq has taken an historic step with the launch of its first ever national migration plan, designed to promote safe, orderly and regular pathways for Iraqis returning home and around 370,000 migrants living and working inside the country.

# data[].attributes.headline
How Migrant Workers are Vital to the U.S. Economy (2024)

# data[].attributes.subject
How Migrant Workers are Vital to the U.S. Economy (2024)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How migrant workers are vital to the U.S. economy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Most people in the world have had the experience of leaving the place where they grew up. Maybe they will only move as far as the next village or city. But for some people, they will need to leave their country entirely - sometimes for a short time, but sometimes forever.
Every day, all over the world, people make one of the most difficult decisions in their lives: to leave their homes in search of a safer, better life.
There are many reasons why people around the globe seek to rebuild their lives in a different country. Some people leave home to get a job or an education. Others are forced to flee persecution or human rights violations such as torture. Millions flee from armed conflicts or other crises or violence. Some no longer feel safe and might have been targeted just because of who they are or what they do or believe - for example, for their ethnicity, religion, sexuality or political opinions.

These journeys, which all start with the hope for a better future, can also be full of danger and fear. Some people risk falling prey to human trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Some are detained by the authorities as soon as they arrive in a new country. Once they're settling in and start building a new life, many face daily racism, xenophobia and discrimination.

Some people end up feeling alone and isolated because they have lost the support networks that most of us take for granted - our communities, colleagues, relatives and friends.

WHY DO PEOPLE LEAVE THEIR COUNTRIES?

There are many reasons why it might be too difficult or dangerous for people to stay in their own countries. For example, children, woman and men flee from violence, war, hunger, extreme poverty, because of their sexual or gender orientation, or from the consequences of climate change or other natural disasters. Often people will face a combination of these difficult circumstances.

People who leave their countries are not always fleeing danger. They might believe they have a better chance of finding work in another country because they have the education or capital to seek opportunities elsewhere. Others might want to join relatives or friends who are already living abroad. Or they might seek to start or finish their education in another country. There are lots of different reasons for people to start a journey to build a life in a new country.

DEFINITIONS: WHAT EXACTLY IS A REFUGEE, AN ASYLUM SEEKER AND A MIGRANT?

The terms "refugee", "asylum seeker" and "migrant" are used to describe people who are on the move, who have left their countries and have crossed borders.

The terms "migrant" and "refugee" are often used interchangeably but it is important to distinguish between them as there is a legal difference.

Who is a refugee?

A refugee is a person who has fled their own country because they are at risk of serious human rights violations and persecution there. The risks to their safety and life were so great that they felt they had no choice but to leave and seek safety outside their country because their own government cannot or will not protect them from those dangers. Refugees have a right to international protection.

Who is an asylum seeker?

An asylum seeker is a person who has left their country and is seeking protection from persecution and serious human rights violations in another country, but who hasn't yet been legally recognized as a refugee and is waiting to receive a decision on their asylum claim. Seeking asylum is a human right. This means everyone should be allowed to enter another country to seek asylum.

Who is a migrant?

There is no internationally accepted legal definition of a migrant. Like most agencies and organizations, we at Amnesty International understand migrants to be people staying outside their country of origin, who are not asylum seekers or refugees.

Some migrants leave their country because they want to work, study or join family, for example. Others feel they must leave because of poverty, political unrest, gang violence, natural disasters or other serious circumstances that exist there.

Lots of people don't fit the legal definition of a refugee but could nevertheless be in danger if they went home.

It is important to understand that, just because migrants do not flee persecution, they are still entitled to have all their human rights protected and respected, regardless of the status they have in the country they moved to. Governments must protect all migrants from racist and xenophobic violence, exploitation and forced labour. Migrants should never be detained or forced to return to their countries without a legitimate reason.

WHAT IS AMNESTY'S POSITION ON MIGRANTS, REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS?

We campaign for a world where human rights can be enjoyed by everyone, no matter what situation they are in. Amnesty has championed the human rights of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants for decades.

We campaign to make sure governments honour their shared responsibility to protect the rights of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. We condemn any policies and practices that undermine the rights of people on the move.

The people are not the problem
There are about 35 million refugees globally. Many people feel overwhelmed by the numbers and see people moving across borders as a global crisis. We at Amnesty International disagree that it is a crisis of numbers. The people are not the problem. Rather, the causes that drive families and individuals to cross borders and the short-sighted and unrealistic ways that politicians respond to them are the problem.
Campaigning for people on the move
With our campaigns, we put pressure on governments to honour their responsibility to protect every single person's rights. They must make sure that refugees, asylum seekers and migrants are safe, and are not tortured, discriminated against or left living in poverty.

We campaign for governments to properly process the asylum claims of asylum seekers so that they don't leave them in limbo - sometimes even locked away in detention centres - for years. We also want to see migrants being protected from exploitation and abuse by their employers or by traffickers.
The individual beyond the label
Each human being has more than one identity. "Refugee", "migrant" and "asylum seeker" are only temporary terms; they do not reflect the whole identity of women, children and men who have left their homes behind to start a new life in a new country.

When we use these labels, we need to remember that out of the many ways in which people describe themselves, these terms only refer to one experience: that of leaving their countries. But the identities of these people are made up of so many more things.

Most people seeking to live elsewhere will feel that the experience of leaving their countries doesn't fully capture who they are. Like all of us, they are complex and unique human beings and might choose to identify themselves as being from a certain country or region, belonging to a group that speaks a certain language or shares a culture. Or they might say about themselves that they are a teacher, doctor, artist, passionate football fan, father, sister, son or mother.

A person's legal status cannot express the full identity and personality of a refugee, asylum seeker or migrant. No one can be known solely through their legal status.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Support our campaigns to help refugees!

You can join our movement of people who welcome refugees. Amnesty's I Welcome campaign calls on governments worldwide to welcome their fair share of the world's people who are seeking safety. With enough political will, our leaders can protect people fleeing conflict and persecution, including through a solution called resettlement.

We are also pushing for other safe ways for refugees to start new lives, such as by reuniting families who have been separated, through community groups sponsoring refugee families to move to their country, and through universities and businesses offering people study or work visas to start a new life.

Governments should never force anyone to go back to a country where they are at risk of human rights violations. Instead, refugees should be offered a safe place to live and opportunities to access work, education and health care.

Where your government has a sponsorship programme, you can get involved in community sponsorship. This is where local communities come together to raise money to resettle and welcome families and individuals who have fled their home countries.

FIND OUT MORE

Laws for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers

The rights of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are protected by international law, regardless of how and why they arrive in a country. They have the same rights as everyone else, plus special or specific protections including:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 14), which states that everyone has the right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution in other countries

The 1951 UN Refugee Convention (and its 1967 Protocol), which protects refugees from being returned to countries where they risk being persecuted

The 1990 Migrant Workers Convention, which protects migrants and their families

Regional Refugee law instruments (including 1969 OAU Convention, 1984 Cartagena Declaration, Common European Asylum System and Dublin Regulation)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Who is a refugee, a migrant or an asylum seeker?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Refugee," "migrant" and "asylum seeker" are only temporary terms, learn more about who they really are.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan consistently makes it one of the top countries of origin for refugees. Roughly 1 in 10 - that is, 2.8 million - refugees are Afghan by birth. More than 88% of Afghan refugees are hosted in neighboring Pakistan and Iran.

For those Afghans still living in their home country, almost two-thirds are in areas that are directly affected by conflict. This conflict prompts ongoing internal displacement. The problem is compounded by the limited capacity of communities, governments, and humanitarian actors to withstand the impact of repeated natural disasters including floods, landslides, earthquakes, and drought.

Concern has been in Afghanistan for over 20 years and recently became the UN's chosen partner for the emergency response to displacement in the northeastern part of the country.

In February 2022, escalated conflict in Ukraine led to a full humanitarian crisis, including 5.4 million refugees. Over 16% of the current global refugee population is Ukrainian. This exceeded the UNHCR's initial estimate that 4 million Ukrainians - nearly 10% of the country's population - would be displaced as a result of conflict.

Concern began working in Ukraine in 2022, shortly after the beginning of the conflict. After initially working in bordering host communities like Poland and Romania, we switched operations to Ukraine itself where we determined humanitarian need to be greatest.

Over 25% of the total global refugee population are part of the global diaspora in the wake of the 10-year Syrian crisis. As of late 2022, 6.8 million Syrians have sought refuge, primarily in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, and Türkiye (which is currently the largest host community for refugees). In Lebanon, there are no formal camps, which leaves its population of over 1 million Syrians living across 2,000 communities, often overcrowded temporary shelters.

The number of Syrians displaced within their own country matches the number of refugees, with conflicts driving over 6.6 million people from their homes and forcing them to resettle. 2.98 million still remain in hard-to-reach and besieged areas.

Since 2013, Concern has responded to this crisis, both locally in Syria, and with refugee communities in Türkiye and Lebanon. In 2019, we also began operating in Iraq.

Concern's work with refugees

Concern's response to the world's displacement crisis is in keeping with the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework, approved by all 193 Member States of the United Nations in September, 2016.

The CRRF gives a set of guidelines for approaching the predictable aspects of these crises. This includes:

Easing pressure on countries that welcome and host refugees

Building self-reliance of refugees

Expanding access to resettlement of refugees in third countries or offering other complementary pathways

Fostering conditions that enable refugees to voluntarily return to their home countries

Last year alone, Concern responded to 66 emergencies in 23 countries, reaching 17.8 million people with urgent necessities such as shelter, psychosocial support, healthcare, and food as well as longer-term livelihoods trainings that benefit both displaced and host communities.
Support Concern's work *All numbers are via the UNHCR's Refugee Statistics Portal and include refugees under UNHCR mandate. For the purposes of this article, we do not include Venezuelans displaced abroad or Palestinians under UNRWA mandate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The 10 largest refugee crises to know in 2023

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 2022, we exceeded 30 million refugees around the world - by far the highest on record. 76% of them come from just six countries.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What is Climate Migration? | United Nations

# data[].attributes.headline
Bangladesh: Climate Change Creates a New Migration Crisis

# data[].attributes.subject
Bangladesh: Climate Change Creates a New Migration Crisis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bangladesh: Climate change creates a new migration crisis.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The once-stable climate that people have lived in for millennia is now rapidly shifting.

Extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, are forcing many people to flee their homes.

Meanwhile, in the face of slow-onset changes, such as sea level rise and droughts, others are making the difficult decision to leave in search of a better life.

Climate change can interact with other factors, such as conflict, economic opportunity and politics, to drive migration. If managed well, migration can be a valuable adaptation strategy to reduce peoples' vulnerability to a warming climate and increase resilience to further changes.

In this in-depth Q&A, Carbon Brief explores how climate change is already leading to displacement and migration, what future changes in human movement might look like, and the measures that are being taken to protect displaced people.

Carbon Brief has spoken to experts in climate change and migration, including scientists, lawyers, NGO leaders and communications experts. This article also pulls together case studies from around the world, offering a range of examples of climate-driven migration and displacement.

Life on Earth has been shaped by the climate. Species have evolved to survive and thrive in their surroundings and, if conditions change, they must either adapt to their new environment or move to find more hospitable conditions. The history of human evolution shows this clearly.

Similarly, variations in the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation - a major pattern of ocean circulation - brought "wet phases" that made the normally " inhospitable " Saraha and Sahel "amenable" for human passage at certain times.

Even changing ice sheets may have influenced human migration patterns, as "early people may have taken advantage of winter sea ice that connected islands and coastal refugia" to move between them, according to one study.

Throughout the Pleistocene, the human population rose and fell in line with the climate, growing when temperatures were warm and plummeting when ice ages hit.

In the newly stable climate, nomadic groups settled in regions with hospitable climates - typically near fertile land and reliable water sources - to form the first settlements. Agricultural practices quickly developed and, today, only a small proportion of humankind still practise nomadic lifestyles.

A study on the "human climate niche" finds that "for thousands of years, humans have concentrated in a surprisingly narrow subset of Earth's available climates". The authors note that most people - as well as their crops and livestock - clustered in areas with an average annual temperature of 11-15C, while a small group also lived in tropical regions with average annual temperatures of 20-25C.

The stable climate allowed the human population to surge from some five million people to more than seven billion in around 10,000 years. Research suggests that the scale of the civilisations today would have been impossible without the climatic stability of the Holocene.

Homo sapiens are the only species to have populated and adapted to every continent on Earth. Instead of evolving into different species to suit the climate, as has happened with many other animals, humans have adapted their behaviour and immediate environment to suit them.

Reliable seasons have also allowed people to develop patterns of seasonal migration. For example, many communities practise transhumance - a seasonal movement of livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures.

Others move for formal jobs that last the season and return home for the rest of the year. For example, the UK has relied on seasonal labour to pick crops for many years.

However, experts warn that the planet is now leaving its safe climatic space. Many scientists argue that the world has entered a new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene, which is characterised by the human influence on the climate. In this new climate epoch, areas of the planet where people have lived for thousands of years may become uninhabitable.

How is climate change making regions less habitable?

One study identifies an average annual temperature of 29C as the upper limit of the "human climate niche". Above this temperature threshold, regions may become unlivable, the paper warns.

The authors find that, over 1960-90, only around 12 million people, accounting for less than 1% of the global population, lived outside of this climate niche. In today's climate, more than 600 million people - 9% of the global population - live in areas that have been pushed above this threshold temperature.

The paper warns that if warming reaches 2.7C above pre-industrial temperatures - in line with current emission pledges - around one-third of people could be pushed outside of this niche. "Exposure outside the niche could result in increased morbidity, mortality, adaptation in place or displacement," the paper says.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that parts of India, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of California and the southern Gulf of Mexico are "already experiencing heat stress conditions approaching the upper limits of labour productivity and human survivability". It adds that the risk of heat stress is particularly high in cities.

Around 50-75% of the global population could be exposed to periods of "life-threatening climatic conditions" due to extreme heat and humidity by 2100, the IPCC says.

Poorer, tropical regions suffer the greatest economic damage from heatwaves. Extreme heat has already suppressed per-person gross domestic product (GDP) in tropical countries, such as Brazil, Venezuela and Mali, by more than 5% per year. In contrast, high-latitude nations, such as Canada and Finland, have seen only a 1% per year GDP reduction.

Climate extremes, such as storms and flooding, can also wipe out crops, while rising temperatures are allowing pests to expand into new regions.

As the planet continues to warm, exposure to climate extremes will increase. Younger generations from low-income countries in the Middle East and North Africa, where populations are generally rising, will face greater exposure to extremes than children in high-income countries.

The orange and red shading indicates that newborns in 2020 will have a greater exposure to the climate extremes, while blue indicates less exposure. Note that the scale on the heatwave map is different from the scale on the other extremes.

Slow-onset changes in the climate can also make regions less habitable.

For example, the freshwater storage is shrinking as the climate warms. Two-thirds of the global population live under conditions of "severe water scarcity" for at least one month of the year - nearly half of whom live in India and China.

Sea level rise is another threat to habitability - especially for small island nations. Average global sea level has already risen by around 0.2 metres, forcing residents of some small island nations to move.

By 2050, more than a billion people living in low-lying cities and settlements will be at risk from "coastal-specific climate hazards", the IPCC says with "high confidence".

The burden of current coastal flood risk and future sea level rise falls disproportionately on tropical regions, especially in Asia. In this region, tropical storms are frequent and a higher sea level can allow storm surges to sweep further inland.

The figure below shows risks to people, land and infrastructure from a one-in-100 year coastal flood event - where yellow indicates no sea level rise and purple indicates two metres of additional sea level rise, compared to 2020 levels.

The size of the circle indicates the magnitude of the impact. The top-left quadrant of each circle shows the number of people affected, top right shows the number of flights disrupted, bottom left shows the kilometres of coastline affected, and bottom right indicates whether sea level rise will have a positive or negative impact on wetlands.

Is climate-driven migration already happening?

Conducting fieldwork in the region, Amali Tower - the founder and executive director of the not-for-profit organisation Climate Refugees - learned that many communities have been "moving every year to keep pace with the lake's shrinking". The earliest movement that Tower learned of was recorded in 1973, she tells Carbon Brief.

This example shows that people have been moving in response to human-caused climate change for decades. However, official monitoring of climate-driven displacement and migration is more recent.

In the second working group of its sixth assessment report (AR6), the IPCC states with "high confidence" that "climate hazards are a growing driver of involuntary migration and displacement".

The report emphasises the "diversity" in climate-related migration "outcomes", explaining that "specific climate events and conditions may cause migration to increase, decrease or flow in new directions".

It adds:

"Climate-related migration originates most often in rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, with migrant destinations usually being other rural areas or urban centres within their home countries".

Every story of human movement is different. However, these stories can be divided into categories based on why people leave their homes, how quickly they make the decision to leave, and whether or not they plan to return.

"Displacement" is the term used when people are forced to flee their homes - often suddenly - for example when faced with an extreme flood or storm. Conversely, "migration" describes a decision to move in search of a better quality of life, often after years of deteriorating quality of life.

The International Organization for Migration - a UN body that promotes "humane and orderly migration" - defines climate migration as:

"The movement of a person or groups of persons who, predominantly for reasons of sudden or progressive change in the environment due to climate change, are obliged to leave their habitual place of residence, or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, within a state or across an international border."

The graphic below shows different categories of mobility and immobility due to climate change.

Displacement due to extreme weather events is usually temporary and people often try to move back home as soon as it is safe. As such, they do not travel far, only crossing international borders when they are nearby and convenient.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) finds that disasters - including floods, droughts and storms - displace millions of people every year.

The graphic below shows the number of internal climate-related displacements recorded every year over 2008-22 due to floods, drought, storms, wildfires and extreme temperatures.

Most climate-linked internal displacement is due to floods and storms. More than 32 million climate-linked internal displacements were recorded in 2022 - mostly in Asia and the Pacific.

Around 70% of internally displaced people did not have adequate shelter for weeks, instead seeking refuge at roadsides or on embankments, and thousands of families were still homeless and without livelihoods by February 2023.

The map below shows internal climate-linked displacements in 2022. Larger circles indicate higher numbers of displaced people. The five countries that reported the highest numbers of displaced people in 2022 are shown at the top of the map.

This IDMC collects data from sources including national governments, the UN, research institutions and the private sector to track internal displacement.

Yet she stresses that the IDMC provide "the best numbers we've got", noting that it is difficult to collect data about peoples' movement, and adding that there are no numbers at all for cross-border climate-related movement

Extreme weather events are typically "rapid onset" disasters. They unfold quickly, destroying important infrastructure and forcing people to flee suddenly. However, climate change also causes slow-onset disasters, which can unfold over months or even years.

When people migrate, they generally move the shortest distance possible, according to Prof Mathew Hauer - an associate professor of sociology at Florida State University. "You can think of this like friction," he tells Carbon Brief. This means that most climate-related migration is internal.

"It's not uncommon to be internally displaced within your own country multiple times or over multiple years before wanting to cross an international boundary," Tower tells Carbon Brief.

She adds:

"When people do cross an international boundary on their first instance, it is generally something extremely sudden, extremely forceful, extremely violent, and their nearest border is a foreign country rather than the internal city within their country."

"In many cultures, migrants are most often able-bodied, young men", the IPCC says. It explains that, often, "women wait longer to migrate because of higher social costs and risks and barriers such as social structures, cultural practices, lack of education and reproductive roles".

Hauer tells Carbon Brief that young adults are the most likely to migrate, because they are generally less "embedded into the community" than their older counterparts who often have children, houses or land.

When people do travel internationally, it is most often between two countries with shared borders, with few documented examples of long-distance, climate-linked migration, according to the IPCC.

In some instances, rather than moving individually or as a family, an entire community may decide to resettle elsewhere. Managed retreat and community relocations involve the strategic relocation of assets and people away from areas at risk, often allowing those areas to be restored to their natural state.

Over the past three decades, around 1.3 million people have been relocated through managed retreat in response to natural hazards including tropical storms, flooding, erosion, earthquakes and tsunamis.

However, the decision to migrate is complex and is rarely driven by climate change alone.

How does climate change interact with other drivers of migration?

Hundreds of thousands of people from the dry corridor have attempted to cross into the US in recent years to seek a better quality of life. Reporting by the New York Times says that migration from the dry corridor is driven by a range of interacting factors which make the community more vulnerable and less resilient over time.

Climate change is "the ultimate ' threat multiplier', aggravating already fragile situations and potentially contributing to further social tensions and upheaval", according to the UN Environment Programme.

For example, one study finds that "extreme displacement levels are more likely in contexts marked by low national income levels, nondemocratic political systems, high local economic activity, and prevalence of armed conflict".

"It is impossible ever to say climate change alone causes movement," McAdam tells Carbon Brief. Instead, she says that climate change amplifies and intersects with "existing drivers of movement".

These drivers can be divided into "push" and "pull" factors. Poverty and conflict are examples of push factors which can drive people from homes. Conversely, pull factors such as political security and better-paid jobs draw people towards their destination.

Climate change disproportionately impacts poor and marginalised communities, as communities without much disposable income are generally less able to adapt to changes in the climate and take longer to recover after they are hit by extreme weather events.

Climate change has the strongest impact on migration in agriculturally dependent countries, where people tend to be less wealthy, more dependent on consistent weather patterns and more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Prof Ayesha Siddiqi - an assistant professor in human geography at the University of Cambridge - tells Carbon Brief that poorer people often live in more "risky" and "vulnerable" places where wealthier people do not want to live, making them more vulnerable to climate impacts.

The main pull factor behind migration is economic, so people typically move from poorer to wealthier areas. Many migrants send sums of money, or " remittances ", back to their friends or family.

Human development factors, such as access to better healthcare and education services, are also a pull factor for migration.

Social networks can influence migration patterns, Hauer tells Carbon Brief. He explains that every person who moves changes the likelihood that other people will move - a phenomenon known as " cumulative causation ".

For example, if someone moves to a new city, their family members may be more likely to follow them there. Conversely, if the population of someone's hometown drops significantly, they may be more likely to leave to seek out a city with more people and opportunities.

"It turns out that that second-order effect is humongous," Hauer tells Carbon Brief. He led a study which finds that in the US, for every person who moves as a direct result of sea level rise, a further 10 other people move due to the knock-on effects.

This means that climate change could become a trigger for more people to move along migration routes that already exist, he says.

Journalist Gaia Vince, who has written a book about climate-driven migration, tells Carbon Brief that in many countries, wealthy people are already moving away from dangerous areas, meaning that the people and economy left behind gets "poorer and weaker". She explains that "this movement is not just of people - it's also of capital, of industry and of resources".

Meanwhile, conflict and violence are among the biggest push factors driving migration. The internal displacement monitoring centre estimates that more than 28 million people were displaced by violence and conflict in 2022.

Central and eastern Africa are consistent hotspots of conflict-induced migration. The IDMC ranks the countries with the most internally displaced people from both conflict and climate disasters as of 31 December 2022. Sudan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Afghanistan all rank in the top 10 on both lists.

(It is important to note the difference between internally displaced persons and internal displacements. The former is a snapshot of all the people living in internal displacement at the end of the year, while the latter refers to the total number of forced movements of people within the borders of their country recorded during the year.)

There is a large body of academic literature exploring the links between climate change and conflict - and there is ongoing debate on the extent to which the two can be linked. Some studies find that climate change and conflict are clearly linked, while others find that other factors are more important.

When synthesising all available evidence, the IPCC says:

"There continues to be little observed evidence that climatic variability or change cause violent inter-state conflict. In intra-state settings, climate change has been associated with the onset of conflict, civil unrest or riots in urban settings."

The IPCC notes that rising food prices due to reduced agricultural production and global food price shocks "are associated with conflict risk and represent a key pathway linking climate variability and conflict".

However, it adds that while the climate has affected armed conflict within countries, "their influence has been small compared to socioeconomic, political and cultural factors".

Meanwhile, many people who want to migrate are unable to do so - a situation known as " immobility ".

This may be because they cannot find or afford the resources they need - such as food or transportation - or because they are not healthy enough to move. It may also be because they do not have the social network they require to make such a big change.

These people may be trapped in increasingly uninhabitable locations without any viable path to safety.

Can models estimate climate-driven migration?

Academics have been trying to estimate the potential scale of climate-driven migration for decades.

"He simply took a map of the world, worked out what areas would be inundated if the sea rose, say by 50cm, and then simply assumed that all the people affected by this sea level rise would have to migrate - and that a lot of them would migrate to developed countries. Really there was no basis for it."

"His methodology was very crude...I don't think he ever dreamt for a moment that it would become the definitive estimate," McAdam tells Carbon Brief.

Migration modelling has come a long way since Myers' estimate. The Groundswell report on internal migration, commissioned by the World Bank, was the first to project climate-linked migration across dozens of individual countries using a standardised method.

The Groundswell team began with a " gravity model ". This model assumes that people are most likely to move to wealthy areas with a high population. It also finds that the closer two locations are, the more likely people are to move between them.

They "calibrated" the model on a country-by-country basis using historical data on human movement in response to changes in the climate. The report focuses on three key driving forces - water availability, crop productivity and sea level rise.

The team then uses projections from the inter-sectoral impact model intercomparison project to simulate population movement until the year 2050 under three different emissions and socioeconomic pathways:

"Pessimistic": SSP4, RCP8.5

"More inclusive development": SSP2, RCP8.5

"More climate friendly": SSP4, RCP2.6

Scenario one assumes very high emissions in a world of ever-increasing inequality. This scenario projects the highest number of migrants.

Scenario two assumes the same high emissions level, but in a "middle-of-the-road" socioeconomic development scenario in which global population growth is moderate and levels off in the second half of the century.

Scenario three assumes the "middle-of-the-road" socioeconomic scenario, but low warming, and projects the lowest number of migrants.

The model does not include displacement due to extreme weather events, such as those counted by the IDMC. It also does not look at high-income nations or small island states.

The original report, published in 2018, estimated the number of internal migrants due to the slow-onset changes in climate in sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia and Latin America. It was updated in 2021 to include the Middle East and north Africa, east Asia and the Pacific, and eastern Europe and central Asia.

The main findings of the report are shown in the graphic below, where yellow shows the pessimistic scenario, dark green shows the more inclusive development pathway and light green shows the more climate-friendly pathway.

The report concludes that hundreds of millions of people could be forced to migrate due to climate change by 2050.

Prof Bryan Jones is an assistant professor of sustainability at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs and worked on the models used in the Groundswell report.

He tells Carbon Brief that sub-Saharan Africa is projected to have the largest number of internal climate migrants for two main reasons.

First, the region is highly vulnerable to climate impacts, he says. Second, he explains that the largest populations of many west African countries are currently under 18. This means that they will be "coming into their prime migratory years as the climate crisis is worsening".

However, Jones cautions against taking the numbers too literally, highlighting the uncertainty in the models.To make the results "consistent and comparable" across the countries analysed, the authors only use data that could be collected across all of these countries, he explains. He notes that for many lower-income countries, this data is quite limiting.

Dr Alexander de Sherbinin - a senior research scientist and co-chair of the Columbia Climate Schools' climate mobility network - is another author on the report. He tells Carbon Brief that some nuance can be lost when looking over large areas.

For example, the Groundswell report assumes that increasing rainfall and crop production will give people more security, making them less likely to leave their homes. However, de Sherbinin notes that often people want to leave their homes, but do not have the money to do so. In these instances, increased crop production could give farmers the money they need to move.

The report also finds that "hotspots" of inward and outward migration will emerge as early as 2030.

Jones tells Carbon Brief that sub-national hotspot mapping is the most important output of the report, because regardless of the scenarios used in the modelling, the relative "attractiveness" of different regions compared to one another was fairly constant, allowing the authors to identify the regions most at risk.

So many climate hotspots showed up in Africa - and, in particular, around Lake Victoria, which is surrounded by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda - that the Africa Climate Mobility Initiative was set up to investigate further, Jones says.

New methods are also being explored to track human movement, providing further data to feed into models.

For example, agent-based models can characterise how individual decision processes lead to changes at the population level. These are becoming increasingly popular - in part because they capture social interaction and the social networks that result from it.

Other examples include a study using mobile phone data to track the movement of people before and during Cyclone Mahasen, which struck Bangladesh in 2013. And Hauer's work modelling migration patterns in the US using data on taxes from the Internal Revenue Service.

Is migration an appropriate climate adaptation strategy?

Climate adaptation refers to measures that an individual or community can take to adapt to the present and future impacts of climate change. Building sea walls, installing air conditioning or planting drought-resilient crops are all examples of climate adaptation measures.

However, it is becoming economically infeasible for some communities to continue implementing in-situ adaptation methods and migration is increasingly being discussed as an adaptation strategy.

If managed well, migration can reduce vulnerability and increase resilience. The IPCC outlines four main categories for climate-linked human movement:

Adaptive migration, where migration is an outcome of individual or household choice.

Involuntary migration and displacement, where people have few or no options except to move.

Organised relocation of populations from sites highly exposed to climatic hazards.

Immobility, when people are unable or unwilling to move from areas of high exposure for cultural, economic or social reasons.

Seasonal migration is one example of adaptive migration that is already taking place and which some communities have already been practising for decades.

The 2024 Africa migration report says:

"Across Africa, seasonal mobility has long been used as an adaptation mechanism to deal with climate variability as well as a risk management strategy to manage in unpredictable and extreme environments."

This type of migration is already an important aspect of rural livelihood strategies in the face of slow-onset climate change impacts, such as desertification, soil degradation, variable rainfall patterns and temperature changes.

(See " How does climate change interact with other drivers of migration? " for more detail on seasonal migration as an economic strategy.)

Singh tells Carbon Brief that classifying migration as a binary - either an adaptation strategy or a failure to adapt - does not reflect the situation on the ground. She explains that there are also equity and ethical considerations in calling migration an "adaptation strategy".

For example, many small island developing states reject the idea that migration and planned relocation are adaptation measures for them, saying instead that it is a forced response, Singh says.

Alex Randall - a programme lead at the Climate and Migration Coalition - tells Carbon Brief that there is "a lot of merit" in the idea of migration as an adaptation strategy.

However, he highlights concerns raised by the Women in Migration Network that "if we talk about 'migration as adaptation' as a sort of panacea, it normalises all forms of human movement in the context of climate change - and some of them obviously not adaptive".

There are many examples of " maladaptive " migration decisions, which make people more vulnerable to climate change, rather than less.

However, as more people dig wells and droughts stretch on, the water tables in Kolar are dropping. "In the four years that I was doing fieldwork, the wells kept going deeper and deeper," Singh tells Carbon Brief. She adds that wells have a high "failure rate", often drying up after only a year.

She says this type of migration is maladaptive, because the city spends large amounts of money without producing "anything new", such as schools or long-lived infrastructure. In fact, her study finds that attempting to finance the wells often leaves people in debt.

Many experts tell Carbon Brief how important it is for communities to have agency in migration outcomes, but lament that this often does not happen.

Robin Bronen is a human rights attorney and executive director of the Alaska Institute for Justice. She tells Carbon Brief about the importance of the "right to self determination".

She explains "most countries in the world have no governance structure to help communities relocate because of the climate crisis". There are many examples of people who were "forcibly relocated" by their governments, with "horrific consequences", she says.

"Disasters create opportunities for particular kinds of capitalism to thrive," Siddiqi tells Carbon Brief. She notes in some instances, forced displacements can be very lucrative for land developers carrying out land grabs:

"When a big land developer decides that they might want access to land, they might use reasons like 'this is a real flood risk and so we're going to move this entire community and we're going to place them somewhere else'.

"So that's a particular kind of forced displacement that's taking place all over the global South, in all kinds of big cities."

Relocations can also leave out the most vulnerable members of society. For example, Siddiqi tells Carbon Brief that in the Philippines, hundreds of people at risk from typhoons are being forcibly relocated. She explains that people with paperwork and signed land titles were able to claim a new house in the relocated site.

However, she says "the poorest people whose paperwork was not in order, who didn't have legal claims to their land, who were too physically unwell, too old, or too young to be able to afford the cost of the move...got stuck behind"

Singh adds that relocations can be very "patronising" to the affected communities, giving them little or no choice about what housing they are moved into and how their new communities are structured. Paying attention to what communities want and the livelihoods they engage in is critical, she says.

"Managed retreat is not a low-regrets option, nor is it easily reversed. There are social and psychological difficulties in moving people from their homes - particularly if it involves loss of cultural heritage or moving a family from their ancestral lands."

The existence of involuntary "immobile" or "trapped" populations can also be maladaptive. Singh tells Carbon Brief that immobility is a particular problem for women:

"A lot of women I've spoken to over many years of fieldwork would like to move and meet their personal aspirations, but social norms around women's work restrict them from moving out of their villages."

Older people are also less likely to move. As a result, Hauer tells Carbon Brief, older people often end up being left behind in "very precarious places" after younger and more mobile people leave.

Mariam Traore Chazalnoel is a senior policy officer at the UN organisation for migration. She tells Carbon Brief that many of the "invisible costs" of migration, such as mental health impacts, cultural losses and changing traditions, have not been assessed yet.

In the coming years, it will be important to evaluate the impacts of the migration policies that have already been implemented, Chazalnoel says.

What rights do people displaced by climate change have?

In the aftermath of the second world war, millions of people fled their homes due to fear of persecution. Governments created the 1951 Refugee Convention to provide a legal status for "refugees".

This international agreement defines a refugee as someone who was forced to flee their home country due to a well-founded fear of persecution due to race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, and has crossed an international border to find safety in another country.

Individuals seeking refugee status must apply for asylum once they reach their destination country. Those whose applications are accepted are granted refugee status. This often gives them the option to work, find housing and eventually get citizenship in their destination country.

If their application is declined, they are usually obliged to leave the country.

The 1951 Refugee Convention is the key international treaty on refugees, but it does not mention climate change. McAdam tells Carbon Brief that although the term "climate refugee" is not recognised by law, "there are certainly refugees who are impacted by climate change".

For example, she notes that most climate-linked movement is internal, while the refugee convention deals only with international displacement. She also says that many people impacted by climate change - especially the poorest - move due to a mix of factors and "would not be able to prove the link to climate and environmental factors".

Bronen adds that the term "refugee" indicates a "failure of national governments to protect the people within their jurisdiction". However, she says this is not the case in many of the countries worst affected by climate change - many of whom are "begging [countries in] the northern hemisphere to stop producing greenhouse gas emissions because they are doing their best to protect the people within their country".

Meanwhile, there is no legal definition of a migrant. However, there are still international agreements about how migrants should be treated. International human rights law provides a possible legal route for people fleeing the impacts of climate change.

Under international refugee law and human rights law, there is a principle called " non-refoulement " - a French term meaning "non-removal" or "non-return". McAdam explains that this principle "prevents people from being sent to a place where they face a real risk of being persecuted or arbitrarily deprived of life, or a real risk of being subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment".

This principle was used in the landmark case of Ioane Teitiota v New Zealand 2020.

In 2007, Ioane Teitiota and his wife, Angua Erika moved from the small island state of Kiribati to New Zealand on a three-year work permit. When the couple inadvertently overstayed their visa, Teitiota's lawyer decided that his best chance of staying in the country was to apply for refugee status in New Zealand, on the grounds that he faced indirect persecution from human-caused global warming.

After a series of rejections and court appeals, Teitiota was deported to Kiribati in September 2015, and his wife and children followed the next week. Teitiota lodged a complaint against New Zealand with the human rights committee in 2016, saying that his deportation had been unlawful. He argued that sea level rise limited the amount of habitable space in Kiribati, leading to violent land disputes, and highlighted the environmental degradation including saltwater contamination of the freshwater supply.

Ultimately, the committee decided that Teitiota's deportation had not been unlawful because he did not face "a real, personal and reasonably foreseeable risk of a threat to his right to life". However, the committee recognised that "without robust national and international efforts", the effects of climate change may expose people to life-threatening risks or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, "thereby triggering the non-refoulement obligations of sending states".

This decision was hailed as a landmark ruling. The United Nations human rights office published a press release on the decision under the headline "Historic UN Human Rights case opens door to climate change asylum claims".

McAdam tells Carbon Brief that while the case was the first of its kind, the ruling reiterates the existing principle of non-refoulement under human rights law.

Meanwhile, some countries are considering the idea of new climate visas, which could allow people to enter the country due to the impacts of climate change in their home country.

However, McAdam tells Carbon Brief that climate visas are not strictly necessary. Instead, she emphasises the importance of opening safe and legal "migration pathways" that allow people to move for a range of reasons, including education or work. "It's just opening up other opportunities for people who want to move to do so," she says.

For example, Australia's Pacific engagement visa allows up to 3,000 workers and their families from the Pacific and Timor-Leste to migrate permanently to Australia each year.

And in November 2023, the Australia-Tuvalu falepili union treaty was announced, which will allow up to 280 residents from the island of Tuvalu to migrate to Australia each year. Under the treaty, Tuvaluans will be able to access key services in Australia, such as education, healthcare and the right to earn money, on arrival.

"[The treaty] is groundbreaking. Under this deal, Australia will provide migration pathways for people from Tuvalu facing the existential threat of climate change. It is the world's first bilateral agreement on climate mobility...

"Historically, most Pacific visa programs in Australia (and the region) have been tied to labour mobility. And none has specifically referenced climate change as a driving rationale. In contrast, the measures announced this week are deliberately framed in the context of climate change and - furthermore - are not tied purely to work."

McAdam led the initial drafting of the Pacific Regional Framework on Climate Mobility (pdf), which was adopted by Pacific Leaders in November 2023. It provides a coordinated approach to climate-related human mobility in the Pacific region.

She tells Carbon Brief that the Pacific is "one of the most mobile regions in the world", noting that many Pacific islanders travel to other parts of the Pacific for work, including Australia and New Zealand, or work as seafarers travelling the world.

McAdam tells Carbon Brief that she thinks a planned "en-masse relocation" of Pacific islanders is unlikely - and not what they want, either. Instead, she thinks that individuals will move gradually, clustering in diaspora communities, including in Australia and New Zealand. For example, she says there is a large community of Tuvaluans living in Auckland in New Zealand.

Nathan Akehurst is a writer specialising in migration, control borders and climate. He tells Carbon Brief that without clear safeguards, climate visas are not the best solution.

Akehurst tells Carbon Brief that visas risk being "very small and limited", letting in only a few hundred people, while allowing governments to call themselves "progressive" and keep the rest of their migration policy the same.

The EU has the potential to showcase the benefits of flexibility of free movement - for example its rapid protection response for refugees fleeing Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Akehurst tells Carbon Brief. However, he adds that "sadly its overall approach to people seeking protection, including from climate-affected areas, is increased militarisation and criminalisation".

The European Union is a good example of the benefits of flexibility and free movement, Akehurst tells Carbon Brief. For example, he notes that free movement throughout the European Union was scaled up rapidly to allow refugees from Ukraine to quickly move throughout Europe when Russia invaded in 2022.

How is the international community responding to climate-driven migration?

The IPCC was the first international body to link climate change and migration.

The organisation has been publishing the world's most authoritative summaries of the state of climate science since its formation in 1988.

Its first report, published in 1991, states that "the gravest effects of climate change may be those on human migration as millions are displaced". Since then, reports from the IPCC have given increasing attention to climate-driven migration.

However, it took decades for discussions about climate-driven migration to reach the UN Framework on Convention Climate Change (UNFCCC) through their annual conference of the parties summits.

The Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage was established at COP19 in 2013 to address loss and damage - a term used to describe the serious and, in many cases, irreversible impacts that climate change is already causing around the world.

This mechanism was the result of years of demands from small island nations and less developed countries. One of its nine sections focuses on "human mobility, including migration, displacement and planned relocation".

COP21 in Paris was "a turning point" in the climate migration discussion, Chazalnoel tells Carbon Brief. She says the Paris Agreement includes a "small but mighty reference to migration".

At COP21, countries also agreed to create a taskforce on displacement. The taskforce sits under the Warsaw Mechanism and aims to "develop recommendations for integrated approaches to avert, minimise and address displacement related to the adverse impacts of climate change".

Leaders from small island states have also used COPs as a chance to raise the alarm about people from their nations who will soon be forced to leave.

For example, in 2021, Tuvalu's foreign minister Simon Kofe recorded a speech for leaders at COP26 in Glasgow standing waist-deep in the ocean. He called climate change an "existential threat" and said that "climate mobility must come to the forefront" of discussions.

At COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh 2022, Mia Mottley - the prime minister of Barbados - gave a speech warning that without a "different approach" to climate finance, "we are going to see an increase in climate refugees".

Chazalnoel tells Carbon Brief that awareness of climate-driven migration in UNFCCC discussions has increased in the past decade. A decade ago, "you had to convince countries that [climate-driven migration] was an important topic", but nowadays there is no "pushback", she says.

The last decade has also seen important developments in international migration policy, separate from the UNFCCC process.

For example, the Nansen initiative on disaster-induced cross-border migration was created in 2012. This was then followed by the Platform on Disaster Displacement, which McAdam says is "arguably the key body in this field today".

The Sendai framework for disaster risk reduction was adopted by UN member states in March 2015 to "reduce, prevent and respond to disaster risks across the globe".

However, the Global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration, agreed in December 2018, was arguably the most important milestone.

Chazalnoel followed these negotiations closely and tells Carbon Brief that this agreement marks the first time that the UN has agreed on "guiding principles on how to manage international migration".

She adds that the text of the agreement is "heavy on looking at the climate and environmental dimensions".

The global compact lists 23 objectives for better managing migration at local, national, regional and global levels.

These include the need to reduce involuntary climate-related migration and displacement, increase the adaptive capacity and resilience of vulnerable populations through greater international cooperation, and develop strategies for managing climate-related migration in ways that respect human rights and address humanitarian needs.

The document is not legally binding. It commits signatories to improving co-operation on international migration, but allows countries to remain in charge of their own migration policies.

When it was signed, the compact was controversial, sparking protests across Europe. "Supporters of the agreement say it will foster co-operation and improve the handling of millions of migrants, but critics fear it will encourage more illegal migration," BBC News reported at the time.

However, many experts have told Carbon Brief more action is needed to help climate migrants - especially in lower income countries. "There is a culture of acceptance, that migration and displacement is okay for the poor - for the brown, for the black, for the marginalised indigenous communities," Tower tells Carbon Brief.

Instead of creating legal routes for migrants and refugees, many nations are putting up barriers to entry.

For example, seven of the world's biggest emitters - responsible for almost half of the world's historic greenhouse gas emissions - collectively spent more than $33bn (£26bn) on border and immigration enforcement over 2013-18.

This is more than twice as much as they spent on climate finance in this period, according to a report from the Transnational Institute - an international research and advocacy institute - called "The Climate Wall".

The report adds:

"This militarisation of borders is partly rooted in national climate security strategies that since the early 2000s have overwhelmingly painted migrants as 'threats' rather than victims of injustice. The border security industry has helped promote this process through well-oiled political lobbying, leading to ever more contracts for the border industry and increasingly hostile environments for refugees and migrants."

The border security industry "is already profiting from the increased spending on border and immigration enforcement and expects even more profits from anticipated instability due to climate change", the report says.

The report also highlights the "synergy" between fossil fuel companies and top border security contractors, noting that executives from each sector sit on each other's boards. It concludes:

"This nexus of power, wealth and collusion between fossil fuel firms and the border security industry shows how climate inaction and militarised responses to its consequences increasingly work hand in hand."

This is despite the benefits that migrants can bring to societies. Smoothing the path for immigrants to integrate into destination countries could add between $800bn and $1tn to the global economy annually, according to the MckInsey Global Institute - a US multinational strategy and management consulting firm.

"The gains to eliminating migration barriers amount to large fractions of world GDP - one or two orders of magnitude larger than the gains from dropping all remaining restrictions on international flows of goods and capital. When it comes to policies that restrict emigration, there appear to be trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk."

Ravishaan Rahel Muthiah is the communications director at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. He says developed nations have a moral obligation to welcome climate-driven migrants:

"We want to support people in their right to stay in their countries of origin. But if they choose to move because of the circumstances of climate breakdown, which is caused by the global north, colonialism, and multinational fossil fuel corporations from the global north, then they should be welcomed to our countries."

In February 2023, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said that climate change could cause a "mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale".

However, many people are wary about such striking language.

Using dramatic language is about "weaponising people's fear about migration in order to drive some kind of climate action," Akehurst tells Carbon Brief. He adds:

"Well-intentioned actors raise the 'threat' of climate linked migration to encourage climate action but all this does is risk bolstering support for migration control not climate action."

Instead of pushing climate action, this fear often leads to hardening borders to prevent migrants from entering the country, he says.

(See " How is the international community responding to climate-driven migration? " for more detail on border militarisation.)

The not-for-profit Climate Refugees published a blog post saying that although Guterres' comments were "well-meaning", they may have "unfortunate consequences" for people impacted by climate change, given the "era of growing hostility towards migrants".

Rahel Muthiah says it is easy to use migration as a "scapegoat for all of society's ills":

"There has been a series of myths on migration that have been embedded over decades that now create the perfect storm for climate migration to also be used as a fear mongering tactic."

Although most climate-driven migration is internal, media stories around climate-driven migration often focus on cross-border migration because this is "more disruptive and has all sorts of geopolitical consequences", Jones tells Carbon Brief.

Randall tells Carbon Brief that climate-driven migration posed a "paradox" for the right-leaning media in the past, but says this has shifted as the science of climate change has become more widely accepted:

"In the past, climate-driven migration was always a dilemma for the right-leaning media, because on the one hand, they were broadly climate sceptic. And on the other hand, they were also always looking for a new immigration scare story...I imagine that in their newsrooms, they were thinking, 'We can't really do much on this because it would involve accepting the facts of climate change.'

"One of the consequences behind the acceptance of climate change is that it opened up the possibility of [the right-leaning media] running stories about climate migration and tapping into some of those apocalyptic narratives, or creating stories that fit with the refugee discourse that they already had."

Right-leaning papers have a history of publishing inflammatory language on refugees and migrants from public figures - including Italy's prime minister Georgia Meloni and the UK's former home secretary Suella Braverman.

"The dominant migration narrative we've heard has been centred on the threat of foreigners overwhelming us," author Gaia Vince writes in her book "Nomad Century". She tells Carbon Brief that it is "ridiculous" that "we've allowed the entire narrative around immigration to be set by right-wing populists and nationalists".

Singh adds that the narrative of millions of climate refugees moving from the global south to the global north is "alarmist and downright incorrect", as many more people move within country borders than internationally.

The imagery used to show climate migrants can also be misleading. One analysis on images in newspapers and websites finds that "the climate migrant/refugee appears as a racialised figure, a passive and helpless victim of global warming".

But even for the well-intentioned, it can be difficult to get the framing around climate-driven migration right.

Newspapers often report on large numbers from modelling studies when discussing climate-driven migration. These stories provide attention-grabbing headlines, breaking through the saturated media landscape and bring public attention to climate-driven migration.

The Groundswell report produced by the World Bank finds that by 2050, around 50-200 million people could be internally displaced due to climate change.

(See: " Can we model climate-driven migration? " for more information on how the model was produced)

Numbers from the top-end of the pessimistic scenario - the highest numbers generated by the models - were presented as the key findings of the report.

"The World Bank was very keen to get the top level numbers out there," Jones tells Carbon Brief. He says the numbers are good for generating media attention, as the media "tends to latch on" to big numbers. Most importantly, he says, the big numbers generate investment from important policymakers.

The media quickly picked up on this, reporting that across the six regions studied, 216 million people could be internally displaced due to climate change by 2050.

Randall calls the use of big numbers "well intentioned, but misguided". He adds:

"There's a desire to quantify this issue and show that it's important, and people feel that they can do that by putting a very large number on it... But how those numbers end up being used in the wild may not be how people intended them to be read."

For example, Rahel Muthiah tells Carbon Brief that on the "far-right", big numbers can be used as a "scare tactic" to encourage a hardening of borders - especially in countries in the global north:

"[Big numbers] evoke these images of millions of people standing on the border waiting to come in. And when you've had this constant barrage of negativity from the government, then you get this hysteria, this false fear instinct that comes into play across the country."

Randall says that quantifying the number of people who may move as a result of climate change is important, but thinks that "using them as cornerstone of advocacy and campaigning on the issue is maybe misguided". He adds:

"What we're aiming for are policies grounded in inequity and justice. There have been lots of movements that have achieved those things in the past, on other issues, without using huge numbers."

McAdam tells Carbon Brief that the use of big numbers can be "frightening", and make people feel as if there is no solution. She adds the numbers do not reflect the fact that people will not move all at once, and many will move within their own countries, not across borders.

Akehust says using big numbers can dehumanise people. And Tower tells Carbon Brief that big numbers can be "very unreliable", noting that they do "nothing to unpack and contextualise" the situations around migration and "tend to excite border security rather than human security".

Jones says that when the Groundswell report was being finalised, some of the researchers and model developers were "pushing back" on use of the top-level numbers as the main findings for these reasons.

"In a positive way, I think it brought attention to climate migration," Singh tells Carbon Brief when asked about the Groundswell report. She says the report was a "significant milestone" and its findings became well known, but warns that "everyone's been quoting those numbers without looking at the methodology".

Singh was a lead author on the IPCC AR6 on the impacts of climate change, and worked on how climate-driven migration is assessed in the report.

She says that quantifying how many people move due to climate change is "ridden with challenges" because of uncertainties in models. The IPCC team decided to cite numbers from climate migration models in the report, but added "a whole lot of caveats" to signal that instead of a narrow focus on numbers of climate migrants. She adds:

"The more exciting question is how can we enable safe and inclusive movement of people in a changing climate".

Other groups have conducted separate studies and come up with their own numbers, which have been quoted widely in the media. The largest of these was calculated by the Institute for Economics and Peace, which found that 1.2 billion people could be displaced by 2050.

Vince tells Carbon Brief that beginning to talk about climate-driven migration immediately, and in a constructive way, could bring huge benefits to both developed and developing countries.

She tells Carbon Brief that "human movement is normal and natural and not a bad thing", adding:

"By putting up barriers to immigration, governments in rich countries are not only forcibly preventing the world's poorest from helping themselves, they are also hampering their own national productivity."

"The economy isn't a zero sum game", Vince emphasises. She explains that investment is crucial to integrate immigrants into society, and it would be "more than repaid", she says.

However, Rahel Muthiah cautions against leaning too heavily on an economic argument. He asks: "What about the people that can't work?"

He tells Carbon Brief that even people who cannot work still "contribute to our communities" and help to "build our societies", adding that this should be a focus of messaging around climate-driven migration.

And Randall tells Carbon Brief that he thinks the focus should be on telling stories. "People relate to stories about other people," he says.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Ayesha Tandon, Kerry Cleaver, Joe Goodman, Tom Pearson, Tom Prater

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
In-depth Q&A: How does climate change drive human migration?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How is climate change already leading to displacement and migration, what might future changes in human movement look like, and what measures that are being taken to protect displaced people.

# data[].attributes.headline
Children uprooted in a changing climate - UNICEF

# data[].attributes.subject
Children uprooted in a changing climate - UNICEF

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Young people on the move are among the most impacted by climate change. They should be part of shaping the response

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Is climate change a major driver of migration and displacement? From where are people leaving, and where are they going? This informative primer, a Climate Migration 101 of sorts, provides answers to basic questions about climate change and migration, starting with how and where climate change triggers human movement.

# data[].attributes.headline
Migration Today - Council on Foreign Relations

# data[].attributes.subject
Migration Today - Council on Foreign Relations

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
CFR Education from the Council on Foreign Relations

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Understand where migrants come from, where they go, and why migration is increasing through maps, charts, and data.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Human migration | Definition, Overview, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Human migration, the permanent change of residence by an individual or group. It can be within a country or international in nature. It can also be voluntary or forced. Intermediate between those two categories are voluntary migrations of refugees fleeing war, famine, or natural disaster.

# data[].attributes.headline
Venezuela's Migrants Bring Economic Opportunity to Latin America

# data[].attributes.subject
Venezuela's Migrants Bring Economic Opportunity to Latin America

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Venezuela's Migrants Bring Economic Opportunity to Latin America
By promptly integrating migrants, the economies of host countries stand to increase their GDP by as much as 4.5 percentage points by 2030
More than 7 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2015, with 6 million settling in other Latin American countries. The region's largest migration episode in history is driven by the collapse of the country's economy, which has left Venezuelans struggling to meet their basic needs.

Between 2013 and 2021, Venezuela's gross domestic product is estimated to have declined by more than 75 percent, the most for a country not at war in the last 50 years. The COVID-19 pandemic compounded the country's economic and humanitarian crisis, and in 2020 more than 95 percent of Venezuelans were living below the poverty line.

The arrival of Venezuelans seeking better lives has strained the economies-and societies-of Latin American host countries that are already balancing tight budgets, especially since the pandemic.

Colombia, which has received the most Venezuelan migrants, estimated spending about $600 per migrant in 2019. This covered humanitarian aid, healthcare, childcare, education, housing, and job-search support. With more than 2 million arrivals, this translates into $1.3 billion in assistance. In 2019, this cost peaked at 0.5 percent of Colombia's GDP.

In the long term, however, this investment has the potential to increase GDP in host countries by up to 4.5 percentage points by 2030, as we find in our latest research on the spillovers from Venezuela's migration.

To reap the benefits from migration, host countries need to integrate the new arrivals into the formal labor force-and society-by promptly offering them work permits and access to education and healthcare.
Migration flows
After a brief interruption during the pandemic, when many countries closed their borders, migration from Venezuela has resumed and is expected to continue in the coming years, although at a slower pace.

We estimate that Venezuelan migrants will number around 8.4 million by 2025-more than 25 percent of the country's population in 2015.

The characteristics of migrants have evolved as the economic crisis intensified. The first wave of migrants were mostly professionals with high levels of education. The second consisted of middle-class young people with a university degree. Since the economy collapsed in 2017-2018, migrants have tended to be from low-income households and with lower levels of education.

Overall, the demographic profile of Venezuela's migrants is like that of the local population in host countries. Almost two-thirds are of working age and almost half are female.

Most have settled in other Latin American countries, while some have migrated to North America and Europe, mainly the US and Spain.

While Colombia remains the main destination, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru have also received sizable flows, with their combined number of migrants exceeding 2 million, more than 3 percent of the local population on average.
Effect on labor markets
Our research finds that Venezuelan migrants-many of them more educated than the local populations-face higher unemployment, are more likely to initially work in the informal sector, and earn less than the local workers.

We didn't find evidence that migrants are displacing domestic workers, although we have seen downward pressure on wages in the informal sector.

The wage gap between domestic and migrant workers grows with the level of education, which suggests a misallocation of human capital-workers' skills, knowledge, and expertise-as educated migrants tend to only find unskilled jobs. On average, domestic workers earn about 30 percent more than migrants.
Cost and benefits
Our analysis finds that providing migrants with humanitarian assistance and access to public services carries a sizable fiscal cost and puts pressure on the budgets of host countries, as the Colombia example shows.

But the analysis also identifies large medium-term gains in productivity and growth resulting from an increase in the labor force and better alignment of migrants' human capital with jobs. These gains are greater for countries that receive larger and more educated migrant flows relative to the domestic population.

We estimate that, with the right support and integration policies, migration from Venezuela has the potential to increase real GDP in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Chile by 2.5 to 4.5 percentage points relative to a no-migration baseline by 2030.

We also project that the cost of integrating migrants would narrow over time as migrants join the labor force, increasing economic activity and expanding the tax base.
Continued support
Early in the migration crisis, countries in Latin America welcomed Venezuelan migrants and provided support in the form of visa waivers, mobility cards, and access to humanitarian assistance, healthcare, education, and childcare. Migrants also received work permits and credentials to help them integrate into the labor market.

However, in 2018 and 2019, we saw a shift in policies as migration flows intensified. While some countries introduced new programs to facilitate the integration of migrants, others made it harder for Venezuelans to enter by requiring additional documentation.

Countries should continue supporting migrants and helping them integrate into the formal sector so they can find jobs that are in line with their human capital and increase productivity in the economy.

This will require improving transitional arrangements and asylum systems, bringing in migrants into the health and education systems, and formalizing migrant workers by giving them work permits and accelerating the accreditation of skills and education.

To cover the costs of implementing these policies, countries should seek help from donors and international institutions. The IMF is analyzing the impact of migration and coordinating with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other relevant agencies to help countries access funding sources.

Countries in the region should also agree on a coordinated response to the migration crisis, in which each one contributes its fair share to the support and integration of migrants.

****

Marco Arena is a Senior Economist in the IMF's Western Hemisphere Department.
Emilio Fernandez Corugedo is a Deputy Division Chief in the IMF's Western Hemisphere Department.
Jaime Guajardois a Deputy Division Chief in the IMF's Western Hemisphere Department.
Juan Francisco Yepez is a Senior Economist in the IMF's Western Hemisphere Department.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Venezuela's Migrants Bring Economic Opportunity to Latin America

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By promptly integrating migrants, the economies of host countries stand to increase their GDP by as much as 4.5 percentage points by 2030.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In recent years, irregular migration has created political furor in Europe, with leaders tightening their borders and cracking down on migrants. The United Nations Global Goal 10 for reduced inequalities urges countries to adopt more humane and inclusive policies surrounding migration. You can join us in taking action on related issues here.
There are more than 258 million migrants in the world. A growing proportion of them are migrating by irregular means, secretly crossing borders, scaling fences, or contacting smugglers who ship them across bodies of water, deserts, and conflict zones. They risk violence, detention, exploitation, enslavement, and death. They often leave their families and friends behind. Their journeys usually burden them with debt.

When they arrive in a new country, these migrants often live in the shadows, unable to get identification paperwork, legal protections, and other safeguards of citizenship. As a result, they often work in low-paying, exploitative jobs and have trouble finding shelter, support networks, and accessing other basic human rights.

To make matters worse, they're regularly vilified and face routine discrimination.

"You abandon everything you've ever known, and come to a foreign land, only to be subjected to all types of discrimination and violations," Yerima, a migrant from Togo who traveled to Spain, told the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The UNDP recently surveyed 1,970 migrants from 39 African countries who traveled to 12 European countries. Their voices are included in a sweeping new report on irregular migration, its causes and consequences, its geopolitical ramifications, and how it can be humanely addressed.

The report, Scaling Fences: Voices of Irregular African Migrants to Europe, relied on migrants sharing their experiences. Here are some of their stories, as told to the UNDP and provided to Global Citizen for publication.

Aziz Abdoul, Senegal to France

I had a decent life back home in Senegal and ran two businesses. But in 2008, I made the decision to travel.

Not because I was facing difficulties or had financial troubles. I wanted to travel because I wanted to experience other cultures. I wanted to live and work in a country that wasn't my own. I always saw foreigners come to visit Senegal, but I had no idea what their part of their world was like.

I am an artist at heart, and I yearned to experience artistic expressions that were different from my own.

I wanted to see more, explore more, and learn more. That was the main motivation behind me leaving. Now that I am here in Europe, I am making the best of my situation. Faith and hope keep me going. Faith kept me alive during the difficult journey here, and hope allows me to look forward to a brighter future.

Fortunately, I've been able to make a reputation for myself here, performing and showcasing my artwork to large audiences. This is what I have always wanted to do - share my culture with the world.

Music is my escape. When I play, I am transported into a different realm. I want people who listen to my music to forget their earthly worries. There is so much suffering in the world.

Ultimately, we all want the same things in life: good health, decent jobs, liberty, and freedom to pursue opportunities for our families and ourselves. And because many people don't feel they have that in Africa, they come to Europe. If I had one thing to say to our African leaders, it is that the population does not belong to you. You belong to the people. You have to respect them and create opportunities for them so they are not risking their lives.

Carole, Cameroon to France

I never attended school. My father believed there was no value in girls attending school. He said I should focus instead on tending the house and preparing for marriage. And yet, I always knew my father was wrong. I longed to get educated. I knew that if you could not read or write, your place in life would be meaningless. In my community, women and girls who attended school were much better off than those who didn't.

The thought of leaving my country had never crossed my mind. But then, I met some friends who encouraged me to consider leaving. They said if I left, I could have a better life. They said I would make a lot of money styling hair in Europe and even learn other skills.

And so I left Cameroon and eventually ended up in Algeria, where I spent two years. Algeria is a challenging country for blacks because of the level of racism there. While in Algeria, I had a baby boy.

When he was just 3 months old, I embarked on the journey to Europe. We spent three days traveling by sea. It was extremely cold and we had no vests, no blankets, no protection, and very little food. I would not advise even my worst enemy to take this journey.

I landed in Italy and spent six very difficult months in a camp. We were mistreated, fed spoiled food, and received inadequate healthcare when we were sick. The conditions were inhumane.

In the end, I made it to France. I like it here. My wish is to get my work papers and get training in something other than styling hair. No matter what, I know that my son will have a better future than I did.

Helen, Nigeria to Italy

Staying in Africa meant one of two things: getting married at a young age, or getting pregnant at a young age. Both would have shattered my dreams. I did not want to waste my potential.

I made my way to Europe via Libya. I spent a year working in Libya as a cleaner and maid for a wonderful Spanish family. They treated me well and saw me as their daughter. A conflict erupted in Libya and the family had to leave for Spain. They asked me to go with them, but I was unable to leave because I did not have enough time to get a passport. They left and promised to file for me to join them in Spain.

I did not wait for the family to send me an invitation to Spain. I took it upon myself and found my way to Italy. I arrived in 2014 and am still trying to navigate my way through. I don't have many complaints about being here. Sometimes I feel accepted and other times I feel like a foreigner. The main issues I have are the barriers to fully integrate into Italian society, especially the language barriers if you want to study or apply for job. Fortunately, I was able to find a job working as a secretary at a government agency. I also sing and write, so I volunteer at the refugee center as a choir director, and style hair on the side to earn extra money.

But these are all temporary situations. I want to further my studies and build my professional career. I have thought about exploring other countries like Germany, Sweden, or Canada that may have better opportunities. I am destined for far greater things in life. And I know I will accomplish my goals.

Kone, Ivory Coast to France

I wanted a life where I could earn a living and support my mother and siblings. I felt sad that my country did not provide young people like me the promise of a brighter future, and I was determined to take matters into my own hands.

I have been in France for two years now. I have a small community of friends, mostly from various parts of Africa, but I also have French friends. It can get very lonely here. I did not expect how hard it would be to settle into French society.

When you hear about Europe, you think it is filled with endless opportunities. And there are opportunities, but they are not immediately available when you come into the country the way I did. You're not treated like a citizen. There are many hurdles before you can start to lead a normal life.

When I first arrived, I spent time in a shelter. I got into trouble and was arrested and spent time in prison, and I had a hard time finding my way. But eventually, I was able to get my residence permit. I miss my mother a lot. I call her often. I tell her about my life here in France. I tell her that everything is OK even when it's not.

I have always dreamt of becoming a footballer like Yaya Toure. He's Ivorian too. I admire his life story, how he became a footballer. But I know that becoming a football star is hard, so I'm putting my energy into something more attainable. I'm training at a restaurant because I like to cook. My wish is to open a restaurant one day. I'm not sure what I would call it - maybe Chez Kone. But one thing I do know is that African food will be served.

Miguel, Cameroon to France

My life back in Cameroon was not a great one. I grew up very poor and life in the village was hard. I couldn't afford school. If I had work, I would not have left my country. But when things are not going well and you feel stuck, you are forced to leave for better opportunities elsewhere, no matter the cost. It's not a matter of choice, it's a matter of survival.

I am happy with my new life in France. I have all the things that I used to dream of: a job, a house, a car, access to public and social services - I am comfortable. I may not be at home, but I feel at home here. I spend most of my time working because for me, work is a luxury and something I take seriously. I don't take for granted that I came here and found a way to gain employment and earn a living.

It's a shame that one has to travel thousands of kilometers to someone else's land to create a better life. I blame our leaders for most of these problems and if I had the chance to exchange words with African leaders, I would probably need an eternity.

It's actually very simple: create opportunities for young people. Make sure our young children are in school and not out selling in the streets. Empower our girls and women. Provide access to services like health care. We should take these basic issues as human rights.

I tell my family and friends at home the truth about life here. I tell them about the difficulties of integrating and succeeding in this society. I feel it is my responsibility to be honest about the conditions, so they can make informed decisions. At the same time, I have been where they are now, and I know how trapped one can feel.

Vivian, Nigeria to Spain

My parents decided to send me to my aunt in Spain to find work. I arrived in Spain and spent one month in a refugee camp before being granted residence and a work permit.

My aunt and her husband picked me up from the train station in Madrid and I was asked me to hand them over all my documents. I soon learned the truth: my aunt and her husband were running a sex trafficking ring and tricked vulnerable young girls from Africa into sex work.

Never did I imagine that someone my parents trusted would be involved in trafficking.

I rejected customers and earned almost no money. My aunt decided she could not afford to keep me. We agreed that I would go to Valencia and find work to pay back the money for the journey to Spain - $20,000.

In Valencia, I went to a home that she had recommended - only to discover that the girls living there were all sex workers working for my aunt. I knew this was not a life for me, but I had no choice: without my papers, I couldn't apply for formal jobs. After a few months, I met a man who wanted to help me.

He helped pay down my debt to my aunt until we paid it off entirely. After that, I cut off all ties with her.

I had my first daughter in 2003, and my second seven years later. My partner and I separated.

It has been almost 20 years since I came to Europe, and I've been through hell. There were days we were homeless with nothing to eat. But my daughters are my greatest blessings.

These days, I am taking classes to further my education. I want to protect girls that are at risk of trafficking.

I also want to fight for migrant rights.

Yerima, Togo to Spain

I lived with my parents until I was 18 years old. I worked as a driver but earned very little. So, I decided to leave for Europe. I went to Dakar where I spent six months, then to Mauritania. From there, I entered Europe via the Mediterranean.

A man is supposed to eat three times a day. If you have a family, you have to ensure they have food, shelter, medicine, and education. If you cannot provide those basic necessities for your family because of lack of opportunities in your country, then you have to try and find a way somewhere else.

I have a young daughter. When I left Togo, my daughter was just 2 months old. People may ask what kind of father I am, to leave behind my wife and infant daughter. But what kind of a father would I be, if I stayed and couldn't provide them a decent life?

So, you abandon everything you've ever known, and come to a foreign land, only to be subjected to all types of discrimination and violations. The very rights that international organizations are meant to protect. But there is nothing you can do about it, because you're not in your own land.

Many of our brothers and sisters died trying to come here. For what? We are losing our best and brightest to the Mediterranean Sea; to slavery and exploitation; and to European countries where their talents are being wasted. How can we say that Africa is a continent of young people, and that young people are the future, when we are losing so many?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
7 Migrants Share Their Stories of Struggle and Resilience

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It has been almost 20 years since I came to Europe, and I've been through hell.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Migrant Workers Behind China's Economic Miracle Are Miserable

# data[].attributes.subject
The Migrant Workers Behind China's Economic Miracle Are Miserable

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Chinese workers who moved from the countryside to urban areas have found social mobility to be impossible.

When Liu Yanchang quit his factory job in Hebei province and took the four-hour bus ride to Beijing to become a courier, it was the farthest the 18-year-old had ever been from home. The new job, part of the booming e-commerce industry, offered him more money than he had ever made before, and he hoped to learn English and one day travel overseas. All in all, he was happy.

Just a few months on, though, his optimism has been deflated. "I don't belong in Beijing," he complains. "I just work here."

Grueling 10-hour workdays spent ferrying packages bought online across China's capital affected his performance, and several lost packages resulted in a disciplinary fine and an angry boss. He still finds the giant city hard to navigate, and has had less opportunity to explore than he expected. Isolated in the small room he rents, Liu says his initial enthusiasm for the adventure seems like a distant memory.

China has freed more than 850 million people from absolute poverty in recent decades, a period in which the ruling Communist Party made a simple pledge to its population: Avoid interfering with the political order, and prosperity will be yours. This contract worked for China's middle class, which grew from 29 million in the 1990s to some 531 million in 2013. In 2019, however, Beijing's mission has become more complicated, and Liu's story is typical of the 228 million migrants who work in China's cities today. These workers, known as nongmingong, have seen their wealth increase, but their place in Chinese society is largely unclear. China's cities are becoming more and more hostile to the people on whose backs they were built, and the nongmingong are not feeling the gains of the government's promise.
Read: China's great leap backward
China's government values the stability its economic miracle has delivered, but this is only one part of an evolving story. The party is aware that life satisfaction must become part of the equation, especially for migrants such as Liu who have yet to meaningfully feel the trickle-down of China's economic success. President Xi Jinping has argued that the nation and its leaders must be concerned about more than economic growth. The basic needs of hundreds of millions of people have been met, but China's leaders must now turn their attention to the unhappiness felt by Liu and others. Where do people such as Liu, who abandoned their rural origins to support China's economic transformation, feature in the government's plan for the future?

The UN World Happiness Report found that migrants in Chinese cities were less happy than people who stayed in the countryside, but the idea that moving brings success is still powerful. The city inspires hope, whereas rural China is seen as a relic of the past: When Google first launched in China in 2006, it did so with the transliteration Gu Ge, which means "valley song." Executives thought it was a charming and innocuous reference to the country's beautiful landscapes, but internet users balked at the bucolic allusions at a time when many people were trying to leave behind the pastures, characterized by poverty, famine, and want.

In reality, migrants' problems in China's cities are manifold, but fall into three main categories: urban, social, and economic.

Migrants often find themselves particularly vulnerable to urban development, and one suffocating phenomenon is inescapable-the smog. Beijing has a bad reputation for this, but the worst offenders are lesser-known cities in the adjacent industrial heartlands. Baoding, a city in Liu's native Hebei, has average pollution levels 7.5 times as high as the limit recommended by the World Health Organization. A recent study of Chinese cities found that pollution has a negative effect on happiness; for migrants who are more likely to work outdoors in industries such as construction and logistics, there is no relief from the toxic air.

For white-collar workers in Beijing and elsewhere in China, the solution is to buy air purifiers for their home and office. But the appliance can cost upwards of $100, or about a fifth of the average monthly migrant salary. Along with paying for food and sending money home, migrants must contend with a housing market in which tenants have few rights to complain about landlords who increase rents. In fact, migrants, including Liu, often rent with nothing more than a verbal agreement. In major cities on China's east coast, migrant workers spend, on average, about $150 a month on rent for less than 16 square meters (about 170 square feet) of space, plus a shared bathroom and kitchen.

Crammed into these tiny spaces, migrants are isolated from familial support networks, leaving children and the elderly in their home villages. "How can you talk about happiness?" asks Zhu Shengwei, a nongmingong who left his home in the poor northern province of Henan in 2003 to move to Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province, a decision that he says helped him avert economic hardship but came at great personal cost.

For some migrants, it is Chinese government policy that has forced them into this precariousness. In 2017, the Beijing government began destroying shantytowns that housed thousands of migrants. Many were evicted on three days' notice, with any protests swiftly shut down by police and blocked from domestic news reports. The government says demolitions serve a public interest by removing health and sanitation risks faced by a vulnerable population, pointing in particular to a fire in one such neighborhood that left 19 people dead. Critics, however, suspect the demolitions were part of Beijing's ongoing beautification campaign. (Few remnants of life in these areas remain, though one nongmingong, Sun Heng, runs a museum dedicated to the stories of migrant workers like himself on Beijing's outskirts. While the museum has so far escaped scrutiny, the surrounding area has been cleared of migrant settlements.)
Read: How Beijing's new residency system favors the elite
Migrants also face a formidable set of institutional barriers in their attempts at success in the city. Chinese society is organized in a system of household registration known as hukou. If you are born in a rural area, it is usually impossible to change to an urban hukou regardless of how long you work in the city, a system that bars migrants from certain jobs and prevents access to health care and education for their children. It dates from pre-Communist China, but in the second half of the 20th century, it became so decisive in determining life opportunities that it has been compared to the caste system. A 2018 study in Baoding found that migrant workers who, in some cases, had lived in the city for decades had little emotional attachment to it, and their lack of security and happiness was central to this feeling. Researchers found that limitations on their hukou rights had determined much of their outlook on their lives.

As China's first wave of urban migrants approach retirement age, many find themselves locked out of urban pensions. Their hukou remains in their hometown, which means their only option might be to return to meager countryside pensions in a place where they have not lived for years. If they do return, they are likely to find that their villages are nothing like how they left them, and not in a good way. From 2000 to 2015, nearly three-quarters of all rural primary schools-more than 300,000 in all-were permanently closed. Many of those who stayed behind lost their jobs as agriculture became more and more automated.

Of course, not all migrants feel dispirited about their urban lives. For some, the move to the city proved to be as transformative as they had hoped. In 1995, 16-year-old Zhu Liujun followed China's gold rush to the coast and left his home in Henan for a new life in Huizhou, a city less than a two-hour drive from Hong Kong. His first job was in a tile factory, on a salary of about $100 a month, work that made him "eat bitter," he says, using a Chinese phrase for hardship and toil. He now works as a courier and earns about 60 cents for each delivery, making him significantly better off than he was when he was on his fixed factory salary. Zhu sometimes works up to 14 hours a day, but enjoys the flexibility of generally being able to choose his own hours. Life in Huizhou is better than in Henan, he says, adding, "It's familiar here now." He hasn't been home in 10 years and plans to stay in Huizhou as long as possible. "China is a very strong country," he says, insisting that opportunities are still abundant.
Read: The blurring boundaries between Hong Kong and mainland China
China staked its economic fortunes on its east-coast cities, and mass migration fueled their staggering success. Migrants helped build the Bird's Nest stadium, the jewel in China's Olympic crown (and at least 10 of them died in the process). They moved to Shanghai for work on skyscrapers that now house international banks. On the border with Hong Kong, they worked on construction sites that transformed Shenzhen from a swamp to a city that sees itself as China's Silicon Valley.

The Chinese dream was once clear: It lay in the cities. For some, this still rings true, but the migrant problem undermines the central promise of the Communist Party-to raise living standards and enable social mobility. It affects hundreds of millions of people whose myriad challenges may undermine their ability to contribute to China's continued economic ambitions, which rely on a productive, aspirational workforce.

Cementing China as a unified nation is an ongoing project. By squeezing out migrants from their adopted homes, the party risks fracturing the unity and stability on which its vision rests.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
fifth of the average monthly migrant salary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Migrant Workers Behind China's Economic Miracle Are Miserable

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Chinese workers who moved from the countryside to urban areas have found social mobility to be impossible.

# data[].attributes.body
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/21582440221079818

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Urbanisation and the growth of global cities

# data[].attributes.headline
Migrants' Job Search Empties Mexican Community

# data[].attributes.subject
Migrants' Job Search Empties Mexican Community

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Some places in Mexico have a long history of migration. But for others, including the provincial capital of Malinalco, it's a relatively new phenomenon. After leaving for better-paying jobs in the United States, migrants find themselves missing their families and communities back home.

On the surface, Malinalco -- with its cobblestone streets and weekend visitors from Mexico City a few hours away -- looks fairly prosperous. But something is ravaging the community: Its people are leaving.

"At least five to 10 percent of the population here goes to the United States," says Benito Ceron Mancio, who works with the Malinalco municipal government. "It's been increasing incrementally, but we can see that today it is much more than it ever used to be."

Salvador Hernandez is among those who've gone north. The 20-year-old man has been working as a bricklayer in Georgia for three years and has just returned home for a visit.

"You miss your family when you are [in the United States]," Hernandez says. "I am lonely there..."

He left school at 14 and started to work in the countryside before deciding to follow his many relatives who are working in the United States.

"One goes north for the work more than anything," he says. "There is always work there, in the fields or the restaurants -- many things."

In the United States, Hernandez lives with four other immigrants in a two-bedroom apartment. He manages to send $100 to $500 home each month. He says he works long hours. In his spare time, he watches TV or goes to the mall. He misses the festival days in Malinalco and going to church with the community.

But in Georgia, he earns in one hour what it would take an entire day to earn back home (if there were steady work in Malinalco, which there isn't). His dream is to make enough money to come home to Malinalco, get married and build a house.

Cecilia Gonzales works at a lunch counter in Malinalco. The young girl's brother is in the United States, and some of her friends have just left for there.

"Here it's the same story, almost all of the young girls and boys go over there to make money and to realize, according to them, their American dream," Gonzales says. "There isn't any work here, everything is scarce, and there's lack of money."

She also is thinking of leaving. She sees that many of her friends and family come back from the United States with clothes and cars. Still, Gonzales thinks immigration may not be so great for her country.

"On the one hand it's good, but on the other it's bad because Mexico is belonging more and more to the U.S.," Gonzales says. "Everyone is heading over there. Mexico is emptying."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Migrants' Job Search Empties Mexican Community

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After leaving for better-paying jobs in the United States, migrants from the Mexican town of Malinalco find themselves missing their families and communities back home.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
More than half of the world's population now live in urban areas - increasingly in highly-dense cities. However, urban settings are a relatively new phenomenon in human history. This transition has transformed the way we live, work, travel and build networks.

This entry presents an overview of urbanization across the world, extending from the distant past, to present, and projections of future trends.

Interactive charts on Urbanization

Before looking in more detail at the differences in estimates of urban populations, we should first clarify what we do know:

globally more people live in urbanized settings than not (disputes in these figures are all above the 50% urban mark);

the broad distribution and density of where people live across the world (sometimes at very high resolution);

although it can seem like our expanding cities take up a lot of land, only around 1% of global land is defined as built-up area;1

rates of urbanization have been increasing rapidly across all regions (in 1800, less than 10% of people across all regions lived in urban areas);

urbanization is expected to continue to increase with rising incomes and shifts away from employment in agriculture;2

disagreements in urban population numbers arise from definition or boundary differences in what makes a population 'urban'.

Whilst disagreement on the numbers can seem irrelevant, understanding cities, urbanization rates, the distribution, and the density of people matters. The allocation and distribution of resources - ranging from housing and transport access to healthcare, education, and employment opportunities - should all be dependent on where people live. Understanding the distribution of people in a given country is essential to make sure the appropriate resources and services are available where they're needed.

The UN's 11th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) is to " make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable ". If our aim is to develop resource-efficient, inclusive cities, understanding how many people they must provide for is essential for urban planning.

Let's, therefore, look at the conflicting estimates of how urban our world is, and where these differences come from.

At first glance, this seems like a simple question to answer. Figures reported from the United Nations (UN) deliver a straightforward answer.3

In the chart here we see the total number of people defined as living in urban and rural areas, extending from 1960 to 2020.4 This is based on nationally-collated census figures, combined with UN estimates where census data is unavailable. Here we see that in 1960 twice as many people lived in rural settings (2 billion) than in urban areas (1 billion). In 2007, urban and rural populations were almost exactly equal at 3.33 billion each. In 2016, urban populations increased to 4.4 billion; while the world's rural population had increased only marginally to 3.4 billion.

The UN figures are the most widely referenced and cited on global urbanization. However, they're not without their critics: some researchers suggest that far more people live in urban areas than these figures suggest. Why are they so contested?

'What defines an urban area?' lies at the center of these debates.

There is currently no universal definition of what 'urban' means. The UN reports figures based on nationally-defined urban shares. The problem, however, is that countries adopt very different definitions of urbanization. Not only do the thresholds of urban versus rural vary, but the types of metrics used also differ. Some countries use minimum population thresholds, others use population density, infrastructure development, employment type, or simply the population of pre-defined cities.

In the table, we highlight the varied definitions across a selection of countries. The UN World Urbanization Prospects database also provides the full downloadable list of statistical definitions for each country.

The table illustrates the broad range of definitions between countries which compromises cross-country comparisons. And since the reported global figure is simply the sum of nationally-reported shares, the lack of a universal definition is also problematic for these aggregated figures.

Even if we could define a single metric to use - such as a minimum population threshold in a settlement - countries adopt very different thresholds.

In the chart here we have mapped the minimum population threshold for countries who adopt this within their definition of 'urban'. 2000 and 5000 inhabitants were jointly the most frequently-adopted threshold. However, the variation across countries was vast. Sweden and Denmark set this threshold at only 200 inhabitants; Japan at 50,000 (a 250-fold difference).

National definitions of 'urban area' as used for a custom selection of countries5

Country

National definition of 'urban'

Argentina

Localities with 2,000 inhabitants or more.

Sweden

Built-up areas with 200 inhabitants or more and where houses are at most 200 metres apart.

Japan

Cities defined as shi. In general, shi refers to a municipality that satisfies the following conditions: (1) 50,000 inhabitants or more; (2) 60 per cent or more of the houses located in the main built-up areas; (3) 60 per cent or more of the population (including their dependents) engaged in manufacturing, trade or other urban type of business.

India

Statutory places with a municipality, corporation, cantonment board or notified town area committee and places satisfying all of the following three criteria: (1) 5,000 inhabitants or more; (2) at least 75 per cent of male working population engaged in non-agricultural pursuits; and (3) at least 400 inhabitants per square kilometre.

Zimbabwe

Places officially designated as urban, as well as places with 2,500 inhabitants or more whose population resides in a compact settlement pattern and where more than 50 per cent of the employed persons are engaged in non-agricultural occupations.

Singapore

Entire population.

Uruguay

Cities officially designated as such.

Critics of current UN figures, therefore, say that such varied definitions of 'urban' lead to a significant underestimation of the world's urban population. Researchers from the European Commission, for example, reported that 85% of people live in urban areas.6

Its project, Atlas of the Human Planet, combines high-resolution satellite imagery with national census data to derive its estimates of urban and rural settlements.

The European Commission applied a universal definition of settlements across all countries:

Urban center: must have a minimum of 50,000 inhabitants plus a population density of at least 1500 people per square kilometre (km2) or density of build-up area greater than 50%.

Urban cluster: must have a minimum of 5,000 inhabitants plus a population density of at least 300 people per square kilometre (km2).

Rural: fewer than 5,000 inhabitants.

Using these definitions, it reports that 52% of the world lived in urban centers, 33% in urban clusters, and 15% in rural areas in 2015. This makes the total urban share 85% (more than 6.1 billion people). The reported urban share by continent is shown in the chart here.

The European Commission's estimates are also not without its critics. Researchers at the Marron Institute of Urban Management (New York University) challenged these figures as a gross overestimation.7

The authors suggest multiple reasons why such figures are too high: based on agricultural employment figures, they estimate urban populations cannot exceed 60%; the low urban-density threshold adopted by the European Commission means entire cropland regions are classified as urban; and that this low-density threshold is inconsistent with observed population densities on the fringes of cities.

Clearly how we define an urban area has a significant impact on its estimated population. UN figures report 4 billion, whilst the European Commission reports 6 billion (a difference of one-third).

While there are clear differences in estimates at the global level, the overall trend in urbanization at national levels (regardless of their definition) is still important. It's vital for India, for example, to know that from 1990 to 2016, its urban population increased by 148 million (increasing from every 4th to every 3rd person). The rate of this change is important for its evaluation of progress, demographic change, and national planning. The lack of consensus on figures at the global level therefore shouldn't overshadow what they represent at national levels.

But would the world adopt a standardized definition? The UN Statistics Division has convened multiple expert groups in recent years to try to work towards a common definition, but none have been successful.

With such a wide array of national definitions, achieving this would be a difficult task. Countries have the right to define what they consider to be urban and rural settlements. One proposed option is to maintain individual definitions for national figures but to adopt a new universal definition for estimating the global and/or regional share.

This may, at least, bring us one step closer to an agreement on how urban the world really is.

Although the definition of 'urban' gives us some indication of population densities, it does not differentiate between those that live in small versus large urban settings. In the chart, we show the percentage of the total population that lives in agglomerations greater than one million people (i.e. large urban agglomerations). These figures are available in absolute terms (the total number of people living in large urban settings), found here.

Here we see large differences across the world. Smaller city-based nations such as Kuwait, UAE, Japan, Puerto Rico and Israel tend to have high rates of large urban agglomeration: more than half live in large cities. Across much of the Americas, 40 to 50% live in large urban agglomerations. Most other countries across Europe, Asia, and Africa lie somewhere in the range of 10 to 40%.

There are a few countries that have a very low prevalence of large cities - in Germany and the Netherlands, for example, less than 10% of the population live in cities over 1 million despite having large urbanization rates.

We can also look at this centralisation effect through the share of the urban population which lives in the single largest city. This is shown in this chart.

Here we have a handful of countries - such as Mongolia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Liberia, Senegal and Afghanistan - where more than half of the country's urban population live in its largest city. Overall, this share tends to be higher in countries across Africa and Latin America; a share of 30 to 50% is common. Rates across Europe, Asia, and North America are highly variable, ranging from over 40% to less than 10%.

In the chart we see the world mapped based on the population of each country's capital city. In 2018, Japan's capital - Tokyo - had the largest population of the world's capital cities at over 37 million people. This was followed by Delhi (India) at over 28 million; Mexico City (Mexico) at 21 million; and Cairo (Egypt) with 20 million.

Across the world, the most common capital size was in the range of 1 to 5 million people.

Many cities across the world have grown rapidly over the past 50 years in terms of their total population. The chart shows the estimated population of the world's 30 largest cities (by 2015 population) from 1950 to 2015, with projections through to 2035.8

Beijing in 1950, for example, had a population of 1.7 million. By 2015 this was more than 10 times higher, at more than 18 million. By 2035 it's expected this will increase further to 25 million. Dhaka (capital of Bangladesh) increased from less than half a million in 1950 to almost 18 million in 2015 (and projected to reach 31 million by 2030). Using the "change city" in the top-left of the chart, you can browse trends for the largest 30 cities.

Related chart - population density of cities. This chart shows the population density of cities across the world.

Populations urbanize as they get richer

In the chart, we show the relationship between the share of the population living in urban areas on the y-axis, and average income (gross domestic product per capita) on the x-axis. Here we see a strong relationship between urbanization and income: as countries get richer, they tend to become more urbanized.

The link between urbanization and economic growth has been well documented.13,14,15

Urbanization is complex, however: there are many recognized benefits of urban settings (when developed successfully) including high-density of economic activity, shorter trade links, utilization of human capital, shared infrastructure, and division of labor.16,17,18

Is there causal feedback by which urbanization is also a predictor of future economic growth? The evidence for this is relatively weak - assessments of this effect suggest that countries with a higher initial urban population share do not achieve faster or slower economic growth than countries with a low initial urban population share.19

Urban populations tend to have higher living standards

There are many examples - across broad areas of development - which suggest that, on average, living standards are higher in urban populations than in rural. Some examples include:

Note, however, that it is difficult to infer causality between urbanization and these examples. Since urbanization shows a strong correlation with income, such relationships may instead simply show the effect of higher incomes on electricity access, sanitation, drinking water and nutrition. Furthermore, there can also be significant inequalities within urban areas; this is evidenced by the fact that across many low-to-middle income countries a high share of the urban population live in slum households (which lack access to all of the basic resources).

Agricultural employment falls with urbanization

It would be expected that changing where populations live will have an impact on types of employment. Rural-urban migration has been empirically linked with the structural transformation process: as urban population shares increase, employment tends to shift from agriculture towards industry/manufacturing, or services.20

In the chart, we see the share of people employed who are in agriculture (y-axis) versus the share of the population living in urban areas (x-axis). Here, in general, we see that agricultural employment tends to decline with urbanization. In our blog post 'Structural transformation: how did today's rich countries become deindustrialized?' we discuss and look at the data on this agriculture-industry-services shift in more detail.

Although this agriculture-urbanization link tends to hold true for most countries, there are a couple of clear outliers. Sri Lanka, Samoa, and Barbados, for example, appear to show relatively low levels of agricultural employment despite being predominantly rural. For Sri Lanka, this anomaly is explained by low urbanization rates, rather than relatively low levels of agricultural employment - a labor share of just under 30% in agriculture is similar to neighboring countries in the Asia-Pacific region. In the case of Barbados and Saint Lucia, low agricultural production and employment are common for many small island states.

How is an urban population defined?

There is no universal definition of what constitutes an 'urban area'. Definitions of an urban settlement vary widely across countries, both in terms of the metrics used to define them, and their threshold level. The UN World Urbanization Prospects (2018) database provides a downloadable list of underlying data sources and the statistical concepts used to define 'urban' by country.21

In the chart we have mapped the minimum threshold level of the number of inhabitants in a settlement needed for it to be classified as an 'urban area'. The data shown for a given country is its nationally-defined minimum threshold. When we look at the frequency at which a given threshold level is used by a country, we see that 2000 and 5000 inhabitants are the most frequently adopted (by 23 countries each). However, these ranges vary widely: Sweden and Denmark, for example, use a threshold of only 200 inhabitants whereas Japan adopts a very high threshold of 50,000 inhabitants.

Note that 133 countries do not use a minimum settlement population threshold in their 'urban' definition. Some use a variation of population density, infrastructure development, pre-assigned city populations, or in some cases no clear definition.

The UN adopts national definitions in its reporting of urban versus rural populations. This means urban populations are often not comparable across countries. Global urbanization trends also encounter this issue: world urban population is reported as the sum of nationally-defined urban populations (therefore summing metrics/thresholds which are not directly comparable).

How is a slum household defined?

UN-HABITAT defines a slum household as a group of individuals living under the same roof in an urban area who lack one or more of the following22:

1. Durable housing of a permanent nature that protects against extreme climate conditions.

2. Sufficient living space which means no more than three people sharing the same room.

3. Easy access to safe water in sufficient amounts at an affordable price.

4. Access to adequate sanitation in the form of a private or public toilet shared by a reasonable number of people.

Sometimes a fifth criterion is included:

5. Security of tenure that prevents forced evictions.

It should be noted that although a single categorisation of a 'slum household' is given, the conditions and level of deprivation can vary significantly between slum households. Some households may lack only one of the above criteria, whereas others may lack several.

How is urban density defined?

The density of a geographic area is measured on the basis of the average number of people per unit of area (for example, the number of people per square kilometre, km 2). It's therefore calculated as the population divided by the land area for that given population.

But what does urban density mean? Here, again, we encounter the difficulty in agreeing on the standard boundary definition of what constitutes an urban area. The standard metric adopted (and encouraged) by the UN for urban density is the so-called "urban agglomeration population density".

An urban agglomeration is defined by the UN as:

The term "urban agglomeration" refers to the population contained within the contours of a contiguous territory inhabited at urban density levels without regard to administrative boundaries. It usually incorporates the population in a city or town plus that in the suburban areas lying outside of, but being adjacent to, the city boundaries. Whenever possible, data classified according to the concept of urban agglomeration are used. However, some countries do not produce data according to the concept of urban agglomeration but use instead that of metropolitan area or city proper. If possible, such data are adjusted to conform to the concept urban agglomeration. When sufficient information is not available to permit such an adjustment, data based on the concept of city proper or metropolitan area are used.

This figure, which shows the urban definition boundaries for Toronto, is used by the UN to demonstrate these differences.23

Here we see that the most commonly used definition of "urban agglomeration" is based on the population and area size of the central city or town plus its close suburban sprawls.

Boundaries which could be used to define an urban area, based on the example of Toronto.24

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The world population is moving to cities. Why is urbanization happening and what are the consequences?

# data[].attributes.headline
Educated African immigrants have trouble landing good jobs in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.subject
Educated African immigrants have trouble landing good jobs in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Insights Animation: The Economic Benefits of Immigration

# data[].attributes.headline
European Immigration: Key changes for migrant workers

# data[].attributes.subject
European Immigration: Key changes for migrant workers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
European Immigration: Key changes for migrant workers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Many European countries have recently introduced key changes to their respective Immigration Rules which may impact some migrant workers who are…

# data[].attributes.headline
Exploring Migration Causes - Why People Migrate

# data[].attributes.subject
Exploring Migration Causes - Why People Migrate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The total number of non-EU citizens residing within the EU as of 1 January 2021 was 23.7 million, according to Eurostat, the EU's statistical office. This represents 5.3% of the EU population. In most EU countries, the majority of non-nationals were from outside the EU.

What is migration?

Migration is the movement of people from one place to another, to settle in a new location. Migration can be voluntary or involuntary and can occur for a variety of different reasons, including economic, environmental and social issues.

Reasons for migration: push and pull factors

Push factors are the reasons people leave a country. Pull factors are the reason they move to a particular country. There are three major push and pull factors.

Social and political factors

Persecution because of one's ethnicity, religion, race, politics or culture can push people to leave their country. A major factor is war, conflict, government persecution or there being a significant risk of them. Those fleeing armed conflict, human rights violations or persecution are more likely to be humanitarian refugees. This will affect where they settle as some countries have more liberal approaches to humanitarian migrants than others. In the first instance, these people are likely to move to the nearest safe country that accepts asylum seekers.

In recent years, people have been fleeing to Europe in large numbers from conflict, terror and persecution at home. Of the 384,245 asylum seekers granted protection status in the EU in 2022, more than a quarter came from war-torn Syria, with Afghanistan and Venezuela in second and third place respectively.
Check out our infographic on asylum applications numbers in the EU.
Demographic and economic causes

Demographic change determines how people move and migrate. A growing or shrinking, aging or youthful population has an impact on economic growth and employment opportunities in the countries of origin or migration policies in the destination countries.

Demographic and economic migration is related to poor labour standards, high unemployment and the overall health of a country's' economy. Pull factors include higher wages, better employment opportunities, a higher standard of living and educational opportunities. If economic conditions are not favourable and appear to be at risk of declining further, a greater number of people will probably migrate to countries with a better outlook.

According to the UN International Labour Organization, migrant workers - defined as people who migrate with a view to being employed - stood at roughly 169 million worldwide in 2019 and represented more than two thirds of international migrants. More than two-thirds of all migrant workers were concentrated in high-income countries.

Environmental and climate migration

The environment has always been a driver of migration, as people flee natural disasters, such as floods, hurricanes and earthquakes. However, climate change is expected to exacerbate extreme weather events, meaning more people could be on the move.

According to the International Organization for Migration, "Environmental migrants are those who for reason of sudden or progressive changes in the environment that adversely affect their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their habitual homes, either temporarily or permanently, and who move either within their country or abroad."

It is hard to estimate how many environmental migrants there are globally due to factors such as population growth, poverty, governance, human security and conflict, which have an impact. Estimates vary from 25 million to one billion by the year 2050.

How is the EU addressing these causes?

Migrant workers having easier access to legal ways to move to the EU

The European Union has been encouraging legal migration to address labour shortages, fill skill gaps and boost economic growth. These include:

The EU Blue Card: a work and residency permit that allows non-EU citizens to work and live in an EU country, provided they have a degree or equivalent qualification and a job offer that meets a minimum salary threshold

The Single Permit: a combined work and residency permit, issued for up to two years by an EU country

EU long-term resident status: allows people from outside the EU to stay, work and move freely in the EU for an indefinite period

New Pact on Migration and Asylum

Read more about the EU's response to the migrant challenge
Managing migration effectively to deal with asylum seekers and protect external borders has been an EU priority for many years. In April 2023, Parliament approved its position on the New Pact on Migration and Asylum and will now start talks with EU countries with the aim of finishing by February 2024. The New Pact on Migration and Asylum sets out improved and faster procedures throughout the EU's asylum and migration system.

The new pact is a revision of the Dublin regulation, which determines the country responsible for processing each asylum claim. The proposed system encourages flexible contributions from EU countries, ranging from the relocation of asylum seekers from the country of first entry, to the returning of people deemed to have no right to stay. The new system is based on voluntary cooperation and flexible forms of support, which could become requirements at times of pressure.

Read more on migration in Europe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Exploring migration causes: why people migrate | News | European Parliament

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
People migrate for many reasons, ranging from security, demography and human rights to poverty and climate change. Find out more.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What is migration? Immigration and emigration

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A border is a real or artificial line that separates geographic areas. Borders are political boundaries.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

# data[].attributes.headline
Sudan conflict displaces nearly four million people

# data[].attributes.subject
Sudan conflict displaces nearly four million people

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Latest data from IOM 's displacement matrix indicates that the clash between the Sudanese army and paramilitaries has uprooted a staggering number of people, with more than 926,000 seeking refuge abroad and a total of 3.02 million internally displaced.

According to IOM's latest humanitarian situation update, individuals have been forced to leave all of Sudan's 18 states. Those with the highest proportions of displaced people are River Nile (15 per cent), North (11 per cent), North Darfur (9 per cent) and White Nile (9 per cent).

IOM field teams have reported that the majority of internally displaced individuals, 71 per cent, originated from Khartoum State.

The UN organization emphasized that the current estimate of displacements over the past 108 days surpasses the total recorded for the previous four years. But it also noted that access to many areas remains impossible because of the fighting, meaning that current assessments have been based on preliminary reports or estimates.

Shelter across borders

A total of 926,841 people have now sought refuge in neighboring countries such as Egypt, Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and Ethiopia. Sudanese nationals accounted for more than two-thirds of these arrivals, while foreign nationals and returnees made up the remaining third, IOM said.

To mark 100 days since the start of the conflict on 24 July, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said that it was "time for all parties to this conflict to immediately end this tragic war", amid growing concerns for refugees fleeing Sudan.
According to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, conditions have been "harrowing" for those reaching shelter in neighbouring countries, where displacement camps are overcrowded and the looming rainy season has made relocation and aid deliveries harder.

Echoing those concerns, the IOM also warned on Wednesday that the rains pose a significant risk of flooding and could exacerbate the already fragile conditions.

Horrors of war

Since mid-April, the conflict between Sudan's armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has caused displacement, death, injury and an unfolding humanitarian crisis. Reports of looting, attacks on public institutions and the occupation of private homes continue in the capital Khartoum, while clashes persist in four out of the five Darfur states.

Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported cases of infectious diseases and other illness among displaced populations who have sought shelter in hard-to-reach locations, where health services are limited. The UN agency also reported that more than 50 health facilities have been attacked.

Although the WHO is supporting health services both in Sudan and bordering countries, the organization warned that the health crisis has impacted the entire region. And as efforts continue to bring about an end to the fighting, humanitarians fear that the situation could worsen for already vulnerable civilians caught up in the conflict.

Six million on the brink of famine

Meanwhile, the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, warned that hunger and displacement due to the war are spiraling out of control.

Latest analysis from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) revealed that more than six million people, around 13 per cent of the population, are now one step away from famine.

Overall, more than 20 million people across Sudan are facing high levels of acute food insecurity as a result of conflict, economic decline and mass displacement.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sudan conflict displaces nearly four million: UN migration agency

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Conflict in Sudan has forced nearly four million people to flee their homes in a little over 100 days, the UN migration agency, IOM, has warned. |

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Afghan children have known nothing but conflict their entire lives. Since June, tens of thousands of Afghan children have fled their homes amid escalating violence, seeking safety and unsure of what their future may hold.

War-torn Afghanistan is one of the worst places in the world to be a child. When asked why they flee, the vast majority of the refugees Save the Children has worked with say their main reason for fleeing was so their children could have a childhood, an education and a chance at a future.

Save the Children has been working in Afghanistan since 1976. Today, we have paused our operations in Afghanistan following the Taliban's announcement that women are banned from working for INGOs. We cannot and will not operate without the full participation of and guarantees of safety for our female front line and office-based staff.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Read the stories of Afghanistan refugees who had to flee their homes in a conflict-torn country. Find out how you can donate to help Afghanistan refugee children.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After more than four decades of conflict and instability in Afghanistan, an estimated 28.3 million Afghans - two-thirds of the population, including women and girls - are in need of humanitarian and protection assistance. More than 1.6 million Afghans have fled the country since 2021, bringing the total number of Afghans in neighboring countries to 8.2 million - accounting for one of the largest protracted refugee situations in the world.

Here's What You Need to Know:
1. Why have people from Afghanistan been forced to flee? 2. Where are Afghan refugees fleeing to? 3. How long are most Afghan refugees displaced for? 4. What are some of the greatest challenges displaced people from Afghanistan face today? 5. What is UNHCR doing to help newly displaced Afghans and Afghan refugees? 6. Are there resettled Afghan refugees in the United States? Why have people from Afghanistan been forced to flee?
Afghans have suffered more than 40 years of conflict, natural disasters, chronic poverty, food insecurity, COVID-19 pandemic and most recently a changeover in government authorities. The events leading up to the Taliban's takeover of Kabul in August 2021 intensified instability and violence in Afghanistan - causing even more human suffering and displacement.

Today, more than 8 million Afghans have been driven out of their homes or their country by conflict, violence and poverty. At least 3.2 million Afghans are displaced within their own country. As the humanitarian crisis continues, the resilience of Afghans and their host communities is being stretched to the limit.
Where are Afghan refugees fleeing to?
Afghan refugees are the third-largest displaced population in the world after Syrian and Ukrainian refugees. In 2023, there were at least 8.2 million Afghans hosted across 103 different countries. Many have been in the region for decades and a vast majority are living in Pakistan and Iran. Over 70 percent of those in need of support are women and children.
How long are most Afghan refugees displaced for?
Afghan refugees continue to make up one of the largest and most protracted displacement situations under UNHCR's mandate. The prolonged nature of the crisis has prompted intensified efforts to support Afghan refugees and the host communities in Iran and Pakistan that have generously accommodated them for over four decades. These efforts include initiatives to facilitate their voluntary return and sustainable reintegration that aims to find solutions for refugees and provide support to host countries.

"Afghanistan's displacement crisis is one of the largest and most protracted in UNHCR's seven-decade history. We're now seeing a third generation of Afghan children born in exile,'' says UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.
What are some of the greatest challenges displaced people from Afghanistan face today?
Four decades of conflict and instability in Afghanistan have left millions of people on the brink of hunger and starvation. A record 28.3 million people are in need of humanitarian and protection assistance in 2023 - a huge spike from 24.4 million people in need in 2022 and 18.4 million in early 2021. In 2023, 20 million people face acute hunger, with 6 million people in 'emergency' levels (one step away from famine) - one of the world's highest figures.

The impact of the conflict on women and children has been particularly devastating. The fundamental rights of women and girls are under threat and many children are out of school. Malnutrition rates remain extremely high, with some 875,000 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition in 2023, and 2.3 million children and 840,000 women from moderate acute malnutrition.

Eighty percent of households across Afghanistan have experienced income reduction as the country enters its third consecutive year of drought-like conditions and second year of economic decline. Debts have also increased - both in terms of the number of people taking on debt (82 percent of all households) and the amount of debt (about 11 percent higher than the previous year).

In addition to the ongoing conflict, Afghanistan has been impacted by recurrent natural disasters including droughts and earthquakes. In June 2022, the worst earthquake to hit the country in the last twenty years struck Afghanistan, killing at least 1,000 people and injuring many more. The Afghan population has been pushed to the limit by prolonged conflict, high levels of displacement, the impact of COVID-19, natural disasters and deepening poverty.
What is UNHCR doing to help newly displaced Afghans and Afghan refugees?
UNHCR is committed to staying and delivering in Afghanistan. UNHCR and partners are assisting the most vulnerable Afghans with emergency shelter, food, health, water and sanitation support, cash assistance and psycho-social support within Afghanistan and neighboring countries.

UNHCR stayed throughout the Taliban takeover and rapidly scaled up its operation, providing lifesaving support to over 916,000 people in 2021 through emergency programming - including the provision of tents, cash, hygiene kits and other essential items.

UNHCR also helps by facilitating voluntary repatriation for Afghan refugees from Iran, Pakistan and other countries, once it is established that their return is voluntary, safe, dignified and durable. Since 2002, UNHCR has supported the return of over 5.3 million refugees to Afghanistan.

Afghan returnees are provided with cash grants to help address their immediate needs, as well as basic health services like malnutrition screening and vaccinations, mine risk education, information on school enrollment and overnight transit assistance. They are also assisted with reintegration into their communities.
Are there resettled Afghan refugees in the United States?
The United States has a long history of welcoming refugees, including Afghan refugees. Some of those who have been resettled are Afghan nationals who served as translators or interpreters during the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. Due to their employment with the U.S. government, many faced serious threats to their safety following the Taliban takeover of Kabul. They have come to the U.S. seeking safety for themselves and their families and have been resettled in communities where they are now thriving. Fatima is a shining example of a young Afghan refugee who is building a better life in the United States.
Help protect Afghan refugees...
UNHCR is on the ground providing urgent aid, such as food, shelter, clean water and medicine. Your gift will have an immediate impact on displaced Afghan families who are escaping conflict and persecution. Start making a lifesaving difference and make a donation today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After more than four decades of conflict and instability in Afghanistan, an estimated 28.3 million Afghans are in need of humanitarian assistance. Learn more about the Afghanistan refugee crisis.

# data[].attributes.headline
The plight of refugees, asylum-seekers and IDPs around the globe

# data[].attributes.subject
The plight of refugees, asylum-seekers and IDPs around the globe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

# data[].attributes.headline
Who are Refugees and How Do They Arrive in the United States?

# data[].attributes.subject
Who are Refugees and How Do They Arrive in the United States?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Who are Refugees and How Do They Arrive in the United States?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What does it mean to be a refugee? - Benedetta Berti and Evelien Borgman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Refugees are people who must leave their home area for their own safety or survival. A refugee's home area could be a country, state, or region. People become refugees for many reasons, including war, oppression, natural disasters, and climate change.

Subjects

Geography, Human Geography, Social Studies, World History

Refugees are people who must leave their home area for their own safety or survival. A refugee's home area could be a country, state, or region. People become refugees for many reasons, including war, oppression, natural disasters, and climate change.

Most refugee laws are based on a 1951 United Nations document, the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The Convention was created to deal with the large number of people displaced by World War II. According to the Convention, refugees are people who leave their home countries "owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, or membership of a particular social group or political opinion."

The Convention originally limited this definition to refugees from war-torn Europe. In 1967, the UN expanded it to include refugees from any conflict or disaster.

Today, refugees can seek asylum in any of the 147 countries that have signed the Convention. Asylum is the protection from oppression or hardship offered by another country. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is an international resource for refugees and countries offering asylum.

Refugee status is an official decision made by the country providing asylum or an international agency. A person who is seeking asylum but has not yet received refugee status is called an asylum-seeker. Countries that have signed the Convention have agreed not to deport asylum-seekers to places where their lives or freedom may be in danger. Once an asylum-seeker is approved for refugee status, the host country is expected to provide civil rights, the right to work, and access to social services.

Refugees in History

History is filled with stories of people forced to leave their homes. For example, in 1685, France outlawed the Protestant religion, forcing hundreds of thousands of Protestants to flee the country. Most of these refugees, known as Huguenots, moved to other European countries, such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Germany. Some traveled as far as South Africa and British colonies in North America. Intolerance of this kind is repeated throughout history, forcing many from their homes due to their religious views.

Refugees posed a global crisis after World War II. The end of the war didn't end the suffering of millions of people whose homes were destroyed, who were released from prison camps, or who had been expelled from their home countries. For example, resentment of Germany after the war was so strong that many countries drove out ethnic Germans, even if those people had spent their entire lives in their adopted country. About 11.5 million Germans living in Eastern Europe were expelled or voluntarily left their homes after the war.

Jews who had survived Nazi concentration camps throughout Europe often returned home to find that their property and businesses had been taken over by other people. Most of these Jews could no longer survive in their hometowns. They had no home, few possessions, and little hope of finding work. Even though the war was over, anti-Semitism was still a strong force in Europe. Many communities and groups worked to drive Jews from their homes and places of business. Often, returning Jews were even met with violence. In some countries, such as Poland and Slovakia, pogroms-organized massacres-forced those who survived to flee for their lives.

After World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States engaged in a conflict called the Cold War. The Cold War was a conflict between the communist political system of the Soviet Union and the democratic political system of the U.S. The Cold War involved dozens of countries in the sphere of influence of each of the world's two "superpowers." It ended in 1991 with the breakup of the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, thousands of refugees fled Soviet territory to seek asylum elsewhere, primarily in Western Europe and the U.S.

The Cold War involved so-called "proxy wars." Proxy wars are conflicts where countries oppose each other by supporting different sides in another conflict. Conflicts in Lebanon, Korea, Afghanistan, and Angola were proxy wars of the Cold War. During the conflict in Korea, the south was supported by the U.S. and the north by China and the Soviet Union. After the Korean War, thousands of North Korean refugees streamed into South Korea.

Proxy wars in Southeast Asia during the 1970s led to large numbers of refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. More than two million Southeast Asians fled their homes during this time, many of them on boats, which earned them the nickname "boat people." The journey was brutal and often deadly. Traveling in flimsy, overcrowded boats, many people were lost at sea, attacked by pirates, or devastated by illness and dehydration.

Refugees Today

In 2017, the number of refugees rose to 19.9 million and 3.1 million asylum-seekers around the world, according to the UNHCR.

Refugees from Afghanistan, South Sudan, and the Syrian Arab Republic account for the most refugees worldwide. Wars and oppression in each of these regions force refugees to flee their homes. About 2.6 million people from Afghanistan have relocated to 69 different asylum countries, and half of those have been forced to flee more than once. Civil war, drought, and flooding have displaced about 2.4 million people from South Sudan, mostly to neighboring asylum countries. Over 6.3 million refugees have left Syria, the source of the most refugees worldwide.

About 85 percent of the world's refugees are from developing countries. Most refugees from developing countries seek asylum in other developing countries. Refugees from the conflict in Afghanistan, for instance, often immigrate to Pakistan, Iran, or also Europe. Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees worldwide-about 3.5 million.

Over half of all refugees live in urban areas. Refugees tend to settle in urban areas for a number of reasons. The legal facilities available to asylum-seekers-including lawyers, consulates, and diplomats-are often clustered in cities. Nongovernmental organizations, such as religious groups, can respond to refugees more quickly in urban areas. Most importantly, however, is the community of other immigrants in cities.

About one-third of the world's refugees live in refugee camps. Refugee camps are temporary communities built to provide shelter and resources to refugees. UNHCR works with the asylum country to provide tents or other temporary shelters, emergency medical facilities, communications equipment, and security.

Most refugees remain near their home regions, moving to neighboring countries. For example, refugees from Afghanistan are likely to move to Pakistan. Refugees fleeing conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan settled in Chad. The UNHCR estimates that over 80% of refugees live in a country that borders the one they fled.

Not everyone who has to leave home ends up leaving their country. Refugees who move within their national borders are called "internally displaced persons," or IDPs. Today, about 40 million people around the world are internally displaced by conflict or violence. That is the highest number recorded since 1994. International refugee laws do not provide protection and support for IDPs, rather, IDPs have to rely on their own government for protection.

Sudan, in eastern Africa, has one of the largest internally displaced populations in the world. From 1983 through 2005, civil war between north and south Sudan forced millions of people from their homes. By the end of 2017, around 4.4 million people were displaced throughout the country, particularly in Darfur.

According to nongovernmental organizations such as Doctors Without Borders, most IDPs in Darfur live in "prison-like" camps, crammed inside makeshift shelters and constantly at risk of violence. Overcrowding causes illness to spread quickly, and malnutrition can occur when food deliveries are reduced or delayed.

Other countries with large numbers of IDPs are Colombia, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, and Pakistan. Refugees from Colombia flee internal conflict associated with the illegal drug trade. Iraq is the site of a major international conflict. Political conflict between rebels and the government have driven Congolese and Somalis from their homes. Pakistan, asylum for thousands of refugees from other countries as well as IDPs, is tied to the international conflict in neighboring Afghanistan. The government of Pakistan must also deal with militias and rebel groups.

Environmental refugees are people who must leave their homes because of environmental disruption. Natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods often force people to flee. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Italy, in 79 A.D. forced surviving residents of the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum to become refugees. Toxic volcanic ash and pumice stone entirely buried the towns. Residents of the towns had to find shelter and work elsewhere in the Roman Empire. In January 2010, a magnitude-7.0 earthquake devastated the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. Many of the city's residents became IDPs and fled to other parts of the country. Still more sought asylum as refugees in the neighboring Dominican Republic.

Environmental disruption can also be man-made, such as a nuclear accident or pollution. The World Bank estimates that 100 million people were displaced by dam-building projects in the 1990s. This generally happens when the reservoir of water held behind the dam floods towns and villages where people once lived. In addition, people who live downstream from dams may be unable to support themselves through fishing or farming once the water dries up. Construction of the massive Three Gorges Dam in China, for example, flooded dozens of towns and displaced 1.3 million people.

In 1986, a nuclear reactor exploded in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. The disaster released a lethal amount of radiation. More than 350,000 people were permanently evacuated from the area and had to resettle elsewhere.

The effects of climate change can also lead to environmental refugees. During the last Ice Age, for example, people living near glaciers were forced to migrate to warmer climates as the glaciers and ice sheets spread across the land.

Today, human activity contributes to the current instance of climate change, called global warming. Activities, such as burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests, add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, trapping the sun's heat. The rising Internally Displaced Persons temperature causes glaciers and ice caps to melt, making sea levels rise. It also leads to droughts, floods, and desertification-the transformation of arable land to desert.

Environmental refugees impacted by climate change are often called climate refugees. Climate refugees may be forced to seek asylum because of changes in their ecosystem, such as major portions of Maldives being underwater. Climate refugees may also seek asylum as their economic livelihood vanishes, as farmers bordering the Gobi Desert in China lose their land to desertification.

Even though environmental refugees are not protected by international law, they often receive a great deal of help. Sudden, major disasters are reported in newspapers and on TV around the world. In 2011 for instance, when a devastating earthquake and resulting tsunami occurred in northeastern Japan, countries from around the world offered aid to assist in the relief efforts.

Other environmental refugees can be difficult to identify. The gradual changes that happen due to global warming are harder to see. People don't often rally to help the victims of these changes. But they can be as devastating as an earthquake or storm. Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya each lose more than 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) of productive land per year to desertification. The farmers, merchants, and families who depend on these lands are losing their ability to survive and support themselves.

The International Red Cross estimates that there are more environmental refugees today than refugees from wars. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees stated that 36 million people were displaced by natural disasters in 2009, and about 20 million of those were forced to move for climate change-related issues. Between 15 million and 42 million people have been displaced by natural disasters each year since 2008.

Like IDPs, environmental refugees are not protected under international refugee laws. In fact, most of them are IDPs as well. They are not entitled to the same protection and assistance as other refugees.

Many international organizations recognize that environmental disruption is a growing problem, one that we need to address. The problem may also increase the numbers of traditional refugees. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has noted, "Climate change can Environmental Refugees enhance the competition for resources-water, food, grazing lands-and that competition can trigger conflict."

Media Credits

The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited.

Illustrators

Producer

National Geographic Society

other

Last Updated

October 19, 2023

For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource.

Media

If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media.

Text

Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service.

Interactives

Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Refugees are people who must leave their home area for their own safety or survival. A refugee's home area could be a country, state, or region. People become refugees for many reasons, including war, oppression, natural disasters, and climate change.

# data[].attributes.headline
Climate migration: Deepening our solutions

# data[].attributes.subject
Climate migration: Deepening our solutions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Climate migration—deepening our solutions | Brookings

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Simeon K. Ehui and Kanta Kumari Rigaud underscore the need for bold, transformative, and foresighted action to address climate-related migration in sub-Saharan Africa.

# data[].attributes.headline
Climate Change displacement: "One of the defining challenges"

# data[].attributes.subject
Climate Change displacement: "One of the defining challenges"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Climate-induced catastrophes have devastating global effects, from intense heatwaves to heavy rainfall.

In 2023, record-breaking heatwaves hit much of continental Europe and resulted in wildfires and flash floods that took lives.

Keep reading

In China, typhoons have forced school closures and evacuations. Meanwhile, in South Asia, rising temperatures and longer monsoon seasons are increasing cases of mosquito-borne dengue fever.

Last week, the United Nations published a new report on climate change and found that countries agreeing to fight global warming by signing the Paris accord had only made limited progress.

The 2015 Paris Agreement is a legally binding treaty to limit the global temperature increase this century to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius. Experts have warned past that level, the problems arising from widespread flooding, droughts and heatwaves could become unmanageable.

As weather patterns continue to become more volatile, the prospect of climate-induced migration is increasingly becoming a core issue.

According to the UN, extreme weather events, including heavy rainfall and droughts, have already caused "an average of more than 20 million people to leave their homes and move to other areas in their countries each year".

Here's everything you need to know about climate-induced migration:

How much of an issue is climate displacement?

Climate-induced migration is a movement pattern caused by the effects of climate-related disasters, including droughts leading to a food and farming crisis.

Ezekiel Simperingham, global lead on migration and displacement for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told Al Jazeera: "Climate-related migration and displacement is becoming one of the defining challenges that we are seeing as a humanitarian network. We're not just seeing it in one region ... we're seeing it across different regions. We're seeing it manifest in very different ways."

According to Climate Refugees, an organisation documenting the growing threat of climate displacement, climate change can exist as a "threat multiplier".

"Exacerbating existing risks and creating new ones like food and water insecurity and competition over resources, which contributes to conflict and compound displacement," it said.

For those who fled conflict and seek refuge in a new country, climate change will direly affect an already displaced population.

Eujin Byun, a spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told Al Jazeera western and central Africa, which suffer from frequent flooding, are also dealing with continuing conflict.

"So its not just one factor pushing this vulnerable displaced population, but it's also that very complex dynamic that they have to keep moving around," Byun said.

Climate-induced displacement vs 'climate refugees'

While many climate-displaced peoples are also fleeing conflict, climate organisations are wary of referring to them as climate refugees and find the phrase limiting.

In international refugee law, the term "climate refugee" does not exist, and that type of migration does not qualify for protection under the 1951 Refugee Convention.

Under the UN convention, a refugee is defined as a person who "owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of [their] nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to ... return to it".

Byun explained that referring to a person as a climate refugee limits the complex situation because the term would mean that a person fled strictly because of a climate event and not from other issues affecting the country.

"I think part of the reason why people are grappling with the terminology, and I think part of the reason why we try and have a more expansive approach is because we're also seeing that people are moving in very different ways because of climate change," Simperingham added.

Sanjula Weerasinghe, coordinator of migration and displacement at the IFRC, also told Al Jazeera that only some people are moving in the same way that refugees do, and more often than not they're making decisions based on various factors.

"Some of it will be related to climate, but some of it may be related to the governance around where they live. Some of it relates to their livelihoods, which may be impacted by climate, but preexisting conditions and how they were able to or unable to earn an income," Weerasinghe said.

"To just highlight the climate as the key reason why is not entirely accurate."

Where are people moving to?

According to the Migration Data Portal, in 2022 about 8.7 million people in "88 countries and territories were living in internal displacement as a result of disasters".

The top five countries with the highest levels of internally displaced people (IDPs) were Pakistan, the Philippines, China, India and Nigeria because of weather-related issues such as floods and storms.

Byun said there are two displaced populations: those internally displaced and those who left for neighbouring countries.

"They [people affected by climate change] don't really want to cross the Mediterranean because they still have their farm to keep, they still have property back in their country," she said.

So narratives of a "flood of refugees" coming to the Global North are not the reality and are not helpful in understanding climate migration, Simperingham added.

What can be done?

As climate-induced migration becomes one of the defining humanitarian struggles worldwide, the UN has said the world must invest in preparedness to "prevent further climate-caused displacement".

The UN has also created a Refugee Environmental Protection Fund to invest in reforestation and clean cooking programmes in climate-vulnerable areas.

Simperingham explained one of the opportunities related to climate migration is that efforts can start before people have moved to address their humanitarian needs.

"What I mean is better understanding the communities, the parts of the world that are at the highest risks of the impact of climate, especially where they are intersecting with other risks and vulnerabilities", he said.

But, some argue there needs to be more discussion on solutions from the global community.

"What can be done to stop that same situation happening again? What are the options for people to move within their country and sustain their resilience and wellbeing? So that's an area - and that's an agenda that needs a lot of attention," Weerasinghe said.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Climate change displacement: 'One of the defining challenges'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As volatile weather patterns continue, some communities are being forced to move to survive.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"If we relocate during the summer, we'd need a lot of barges to move everything ...The thought of moving our village is very sad because Shishmaref is the place where I grew up. Shishmaref is a great place to live because everyone knows each other. If we move, it would probably bring our community closer together. It could be totally opposite though because some people might just move to a new place. If we move, it won't be the same because it wouldn't be the Shishmaref that everyone knows."
Allison "Anisaaluk" Nayokpuk, Shismaref, Alaska

"About ﬁve years ago the sea ice used to take longer to melt. It lasted about 10 months but now it's only 8 months. This harms our way of life, our way of hunting, our way of ﬁshing, and our way of traveling from one place to another."
Charlie Nakqashuk, Pangnirtung, Nunavut

Like many nomadic people, indigenous groups in the arctic have used mobility as a way of adapting to changing circumstances. Climate change must therefore be seen as one factor among many which changes the patterns of movement among indigenous Arctic peoples.

Over the last half century there has been a general decrease in the mobility of indigenous Arctic people. One cause of this has been the desire of central governments to provide services such as health and education, which, the governments have argued, required nomadic people to settle into small town and villages. This sedenterization has not always been voluntary and there are examples of forced settlement from across the Arctic region, especially in the Russian far north. Forced movement as well as settlement has also taken place. The primary example being Canada's resettlement of many Arctic people to the far North of the country. Many claim this was politically motivated and was a way of the Canadian government reasserting sovereignty over the area at the high of the Cold War. Another major trend has been the out-migration of young people in search of work and education in other locations.

Therefore changes in mobility linked to climate change must be seen in the context of these other significant factors. None-the-less climate change has recently become an important and emerging force shaping the movement of people in the Arctic region. Climate change has impacted the mobility of indigenous Arctic peoples in a number of ways. Changes in habitat caused by climate change are altering the way in which people forage and hunt. Changing weather patterns are also changing the usual range of herd animals, forcing people to move with them in order continue hunting. With thinner winter ice, crossing rivers and lakes becomes harder or impossible. Traditional routes of movement for mobile hunters are therefore changing or disappearing.

Many Arctic communities depend on barges for their supplies. Increased numbers of storms and the melting of a layer of protective sea ice has caused many barge landing sites to become unusable due to erosion. In a number of cases this has forced people to find new barge sites. However, in one notable case the disappearance of barge sites and other coastal erosion has left the village of Newtok facing relocation.

Climate change may also result in new industry and actively in Arctic regions, which will have implications for the movement of people. As ice thins and melts new opportunities for fossil fuel extraction and mining emerge. This could mean that Arctic people move in order to find work in these new operations, and that people from other areas will increasingly move into the Arctic. However it is unclear what impact these new operations will have on the culture, health and well-being of indigenous people. As a statement from the Indigenous Peoples Global Summit on Climate Change put it "any economic advantage that might trickle down to the Inuit cannot compensate for the hugely negative effects of climate change on their health and well-being ".

Further, the fact that the melting Arctic has created the opportunity for more fossil fuel extraction is deeply and tragically ironic.
Moving Stories is a new series of blog posts that use the voices of real people to explain the relationship between migration and climate change across the world. For this story we are grateful for the help of the Many Strong Voices project who conducted the original interviews and Beth Ferris as the Brookings LSE project on Internal Displacement for her recent work on migration and Indigenous people in the Arctic region.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Moving stories: The Arctic. Migration and displacement linked to climate change -

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Alex Randall "If we relocate during the summer, we'd need a lot of barges to move everything ...The thought of moving our village is very sad because Shishmaref is the place where I grew up. Shishmaref is a great place to live because everyone knows each other.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Understanding the experience of people who move is key to understanding climate-linked migration and what to do about it. A key area of our work is collecting and presenting these testimonies. By doing this we hope to place real experiences at the centre of the debate about climate change and migration.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Understanding the experience of people who move is key to understanding climate-linked migration and what to do about it. A key area of our work is collecting and presenting these testimonies. By doing this we hope to place real experiences at the centre of the debate about climate change and migration.

# data[].attributes.headline
Latin American Climate Migration Stories

# data[].attributes.subject
Latin American Climate Migration Stories

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Alex Randall The Latin American region is one of the most vulnerable to climate change. Many of its countries are located in the hurricane belt; others depend on the thaw of the snow and ice deposits in the Andes to supply water to their urban and agricultural sectors; and several are at high risk f…

# data[].attributes.headline
The world's first climate change refugees

# data[].attributes.subject
The world's first climate change refugees

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The world's first climate change refugees

# data[].attributes.headline
Canada could be a safe haven for climate refugees

# data[].attributes.subject
Canada could be a safe haven for climate refugees

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Canada could be safe haven for climate refugees

# data[].attributes.headline
The Refugees the World Barely Pays Attention To

# data[].attributes.subject
The Refugees the World Barely Pays Attention To

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Refugees The World Barely Pays Attention To

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
They’re known as ‘climate refugees.’ But there’s not even an international definition for them, let alone recognition or protection.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Climate refugees are people who must leave their homes and communities because of the effects of climate change and global warming.

Climate change is caused by natural events, such as volcanic eruptions, as well as human activities. Climate change has happened many times since Earth was formed billions of years ago.

Global warming is the most recent period of climate change. Human activities like burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests contribute to global warming because they release greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere.

Rising temperatures associated with global warming cause glaciers and ice caps to melt. This can cause flooding and make sea levels rise. Rising temperatures also lead to droughts and desertification-the transformation of arable land to desert. Some of these effects, such as sea level rise, can put land completely underwater, making it uninhabitable. Others effects, such as drought, make it impossible for people in the region to support themselves.

Climate refugees belong to a larger group of immigrants known as environmental refugees. Environmental refugees include immigrants forced to flee because of natural disasters, such as volcanoes and tsunamis.

The International Red Cross estimates that there are more environmental refugees than political refugees fleeing from wars and other conflicts. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says 36 million people were displaced by natural disasters in 2009, the last year such a report was taken. A 2021 World Bank reported estimated that the climate crisis could drive more than 200 million people to move within their countries by 2050. In 2020 the Institute for Economics and Peace put the number of people at risk of displacement by 2050 at over 1 billion.

Sea-Level Rise
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that sea levels will rise a total of 0.18 to 0.6 meters (seven inches to two feet) between 1990 and 2100. Rising sea levels already cause problems in low-lying coastal areas of the world.

For instance, about half the population of Bangladesh lives less than five meters (16.5 feet) above sea level. In 1995, Bangladesh's Bhola Island was half-submerged by rising sea levels, leaving 500,000 people homeless. Scientists predict Bangladesh will lose 17 percent of its land by 2050 due to flooding caused by climate change. The loss of land could lead to as many as 20 million climate refugees from Bangladesh.

The U.S. state of Louisiana loses about 65 square kilometers (25 square miles) to the sea every year. Most land is eroding near the Mississippi delta. Sea-level rise puts the productive fisheries around the delta at risk as wetlands are submerged. The wetland ecosystem will be lost to more saltwater habitat, and fishermen will have to go further from shore to pursue fish. The loss of wetlands also makes damage from storms like Hurricane Katrina more likely.

Maldives
Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, is perhaps the country most threatened by sea level rise. Maldives rises only 2.4 meters (eight feet) above sea level at its highest point. Sea-level rise will likely create climate refugees because of changes in both economy and habitat.

Tourism supports more than 25 percent of the Maldivian economy. As the islands slowly sink underwater, they can support fewer tourists and tourist facilities, such as hotels. Fishing is the nation's second-largest industry.

The environment and economy of Maldives are threatened as sea levels rise and become less salty. The melting of polar ice caps increases the amount of freshwater in the ocean, as well as causing sea levels to rise. The increased amount of freshwater in the marine environment threatens the delicate ecosystem of coral reefs that surround the islands. The habitat may not be able to support as many fish, threatening the fisheries around Maldives. Other fish may not be able to adapt to the less-salty water. Without income generated from tourism or fishing, many Maldivians may be forced to migrate to seek new jobs.

Finally, sea level rise may sink all 1,200 islands of Maldives. This would force all Maldivians to find new places to live. Maldives leaders have worked with leaders in Australia, India, and Sri Lanka to plan an evacuation program should Maldives become uninhabitable.

Venice
The urban area of Venice, Italy, is also threatened by sea level rise. Venice is an ancient city built on a series of islands in a lagoon on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. The city has always been threatened by storms and storm surges. Venice's main "streets" are actually canals and smaller waterways. As the tide comes in, entire , or town squares, are put under several centimeters of water. In the past century, flooding has become more frequent. In 1900, the city's main piazza was underwater seven times. In 1996, it flooded 99 times.

Like Maldives, Venice depends on tourism to support its economy. As the city floods more often, fewer tourists will visit and tourism facilities will be harder to maintain. Flooding and mold will threaten popular tourist sites, such as St. Mark's Basilica and the Doge's Palace. Venetians may be forced to migrate as their city and their economy sink.

Many other coastal cities throughout the world are located in low-lying areas vulnerable to sea level rise: Manhattan, New York, United States; London, England; Shanghai, China; Hamburg, Germany; Bangkok, Thailand; Jakarta, Indonesia; Mumbai, India; Manila, Philippines; and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Drought
While rising seas threaten coastal regions, drought can create climate refugees inland. When people cannot grow crops on the land where they live, they have to move somewhere else in order to survive. For example, the Gobi Desert in China expands more than 3,600 square kilometers (1,390 square miles) every year. Farmers and merchants in the area surrounding the Gobi migrate to China's crowded urban areas as grasslands are overtaken by desert.

Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya each lose more than 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) of productive land every year to desertification. These residents on the edge of the Sahara Desert may move to cities in the Maghreb, a region of northwest Africa. They may also choose to move to the more developed countries of Europe.

Residents near the Horn of Africa are especially vulnerable to drought and desertification. Most rural residents in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea engage in subsistence agriculture. Subsistence agriculture means the farmers produce enough crops for themselves, their families, and communities. They do not sell their produce on the national or international market. Many subsistence farmers depend on their crops to feed their livestock. Years of severe drought prevent crops from growing, which also prevents livestock from being raised.

Thousands of Somalis and Ethiopians, threatened by starvation and poverty, have already fled to refugee camps in Kenya. Camps that were designed to provide temporary shelter for 90,000 people are now home to twice that number.

Refugee Status
Environmental refugees are not protected by international laws. They face greater political risks than refugees who flee their homes due to conflict or political oppression. Unlike traditional refugees, climate refugees may be sent back to their devastated homeland or forced into a refugee camp.

Most climate refugees are internal migrants. Internal migration is the process of people moving elsewhere in their own country. Often, climate refugees are rural and coastal residents who are forced to migrate to urban areas. These climate refugees face numerous problems. Skills such as herding and farming are not relevant in urban areas. Rural farmers are often more self-sufficient than many urban dwellers; they may not be familiar with depending on a corporation or other people for employment.

Climate refugees who migrate outside their home countries face other difficulties. They must adjust to different laws, languages, and cultures.

Climate refugees may encounter conflict with indigenous residents. Educational and health care systems must adjust to a sudden, new population. This population may speak a different language or have different customs than the native population.

Climate change may also increase the number of traditional refugees. Antonio Guterres, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, has noted, "Climate change can enhance the competition for resources-water, food, grazing lands-and that competition can trigger conflict."

Fast Fact

Competition and Conflict
Climate change can enhance the competition for resources like water, food, grazing lands, and that competition can trigger conflict.
- Antonio Guterres, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, 2009

Fast Fact

School Boats
In Bangladesh, climate-induced flooding is swallowing up much of the country's land. The nonprofit organization Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, which means self-reliance, is building schools on boats. The group has built more than 40 school-boats, complete with computers and libraries. Solar lamps allow students to study at night after working all day.

Fast Fact

Sinking State
The island nation of Tuvalu has struck an agreement with New Zealand to accept its 11,600 citizens in the event that rising sea levels overtake the country. Tuvalu is made up of eight tiny coral atolls, with a total land area of just 26 square kilometers (10 square miles). The highest point in Tuvalu is only 4.5 meters (14.7 feet) above sea level.

For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource.

Media

If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media.

Text

Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service.

Interactives

Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Climate refugees are people who must leave their homes and communities because of the effects of climate change and global warming. Climate refugees belong to a larger group of immigrants known as environmental refugees.