Urbanites’ Attitudes towards Environmental Migration: Evidence from Kenya and Vietnam

The displacement of large numbers of people due to the increasing intensity of extreme weather events, sea-level rise and the deterioration of environmental conditions is one of the most salient consequences of climate change. While estimates of the magnitude of climate change induced migration vary dramatically, there is broad consensus that climate change is increasingly becoming an important factor pushing people to move. As more and more people are expected to migrate in response to environmental challenges, what is the public’s predisposition to environmental migrants? Existing studies on public opinion toward immigration show that the reason of migration plays a significant role in determining the social acceptance of migrants. Results consistently reveal higher acceptance of migrants fleeing political persecution or war than of economic migrants. Using original survey data from Vietnam and Kenya, we test whether individuals also extend the notion of deservingness to environmental migrants. We focus on internal migration from rural to urban areas, which makes up the large bulk of climate change induced migration. Our results from a choice-based conjoint design demonstrate that while some migration motives receive higher endorsement than others, residents in receiving areas do not distinguish between economically motivated migration and environmentally induced migration. These findings suggest that there is hitherto a low level of public acceptance of climate change induced environmental migration.

About the presenter:

Dr Quynh Nguyen is a lecturer at the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University. Quynh’s research interests are at the intersection of international political economy, environmental politics, public opinion. She utilizes a range of quantitative and qualitative methodologies and draws on original cross-national and sub-national data in her work. During the academic year 2018-19, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University. Quynh earned her PhD from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich)’s Center for Comparative and International Studies.