Intersections of climate change, migration, and health: experiences of first-generation migrants from Latin America to the Atlanta-metropolitan area

ABSTRACT

Climate change is an important driver of migration, but little research exists on whether migrant communities in the U.S. identify climate change-related factors as reasons for migrating. In 2021, we conducted a multidisciplinary, collaborative project to better understand the nexus of climate change and immigrant health in the Atlanta area. This paper presents one arm of this collaboration that explored both the role of climate change in decisions to immigrate to Georgia and the ways that climate change intersects with other possible drivers of migration. First generation migrants from Latin America were recruited primarily through CPACS Cosmo Health Center and were invited to participate in an intake survey and an in-depth interview. Results were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. Findings suggest that while participants may not have explicitly identified climate change as a primary reason for migration, in both surveys and in-depth interviews, participants reported multiple and intersecting social, economic, political, and environmental factors that are directly or indirectly influenced by climate change and that are involved in their decisions to migrate. The narratives that emerged from in-depth interviews further contextualised survey data and elucidated the complex nexus of climate change, migration, and health.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• migration
• health
• multidisciplinary
• anthropology
• Latin America

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the staff of the CPACS Cosmo Health Center for allowing us to both recruit and conduct interviews on site. Thanks to the participants in our study for their time and willingness to tell us their stories. Thanks also to the Atlanta Global Research and Education Cooperative (AGREC) and the Atlanta Global Studies Center for both grant support and for allowing us to present and further disseminate the results of our research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability

The data are not publicly available due to information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Notes

1 Participants were from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Paraguay, Brazil, and Dominican Republic. One participant in the survey was from Puerto Rico; although our initial intent was to capture international migrant experiences from Latin America, people from Puerto Rico (a U.S. territory) fit the criteria we created for the study of people who migrated to the Atlanta metropolitan area from Latin America and the Caribbean, so this participant was included in the analysis. However, we acknowledge that Puerto Ricans moving to the mainland U.S. are internal migrants and that Puerto Ricans have more freedom in migrating, which factors into to decision-making.

2 Continental U.S., in the case of the one participant from Puerto Rico

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Atlanta Global Research and Education Cooperative (AGREC), housed within the Atlanta Global Studies Center. The project was also supported in part by the Emory Climate & Health Research Incubator.