Abstract
Much of the climate migration research examines whether migration is a successful/adaptive response that reduces climate risk or a failed/maladaptive response that increases risk. However, it has largely failed to examine migration outcomes through migrants’ own eyes, thereby yielding insights that are potentially disconnected from their realities and aspirations. To address this gap, we examine how migrants perceive “success” and “failure” concerning drought-influenced migration. Focusing on migration from agro-pastoral northern Kenya to the City of Nairobi, we conduct semi-structured interviews with 36 migrants who fulfill two criteria: (1) their migration was induced mainly by drought impacts, and (2) they had spent at least one year in Nairobi. We then apply a thematic analysis to identify the main success and failure perceptions. We find that migrants’ success perceptions focus on the support of their households in their places of origin. A similar failure theme pertains to migrants’ inability to achieve this objective. However, another predominant theme emphasizes failure as cultural assimilation in Nairobi, often linked with substance abuse and perceived as a trigger for cascading failures, including migrants’ inability to achieve their adaptation-related objectives. We also show how migrants’ perceptions reveal their preferences for specific adaptations, including seemingly maladaptive ones, and the role of social factors in determining migration’s overall success and/or failure. Accordingly, we argue that research must shift from framing migration narrowly as a climate risk reduction strategy, to conceptualizing it as a process of navigating a landscape of desired and undesired outcomes.
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Acknowledgements
This research would not have been possible without the guidance and support provided by Mr. Sunya Orre of Kenya’s National Drought Management Authority, and without the assistance provided by Mr. Jackson Kennedy in reaching many of the interviewees and translating the interviews. We are deeply grateful to the 36 interviewees who were willing to share their time and experiences with us. The authors also thank Roni Avneri and Dana Cohen for their assistance in transcribing the interviews, and Michal Kidron and Carmit Cohen-Gelberg for the preparation of the figures.
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This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation research grant number 1713/19.
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This study was approved by the Institutional Review Boards of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the United States International University—Africa. All interviews were held only after informed consent was obtained from each participant, subsequent to reading the informed consent form in Swahili. The research was conducted under research permit number NACOSTI/P/19/25935/27607, granted by Kenya’s National Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation.
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Tubi, A., Israeli, Y. From risk reduction to a landscape of (un)desired outcomes: Climate migrants’ perceptions of migration success and failure. Popul Environ 45, 9 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-023-00421-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-023-00421-8