Climate change, migration, and internally displaced populations in the Indian Ocean Region – evidence from South Asia and East Africa

ABSTRACT

The field of migration studies is increasingly widening its scope and research by addressing the complex and converging interactions between migration, internal displacement, livelihoods, and poverty. Within this space, internal migration and displacement are assuming recognition as more contextual and layered processes for vulnerable populations in the global south. A growing body of evidence indicates that regions in East and Southeast Africa and South Asia continue to witness a surge in internal and intra-regional movements of people who are termed as climate or environmental refugees. Resultantly, they are likely to move, are on the move, as also those who are unable to move and are left behind, and those who stay. The paper examines the close and often blurring linkages between environmental migrants, (climate) refugees, aspirational and economic migrants. Engaging with the question of why people move, we observe that the ‘climate-migration’ nexus is intricate and far from a facile, reductionist narrative, as is the ‘migration as adaptation and agency’ nexus –issues that are intertwined when perceiving climate migration in Africa and Asia.

KEYWORDS:

• Indian Ocean Region
• East and Horn of Africa (EHoA)
• South Asia
• migration
• climate refugees
• displacement

Introduction

While there is an increasing body of research focused on climate change-related migration, there is not yet adequate research on how environmental refugees overcome their ‘vulnerabilities’ and enhance their individual and collective agency to deal with climate, health, and livelihood challenges in their ‘new’ socio-economic and political settings (Black, Bennett, Thomas, & Beddington, 2011; Hunter, Luna, & Norton, 2015; McLeman, 2017). Displacement related to climate change is complex, and so are the dynamics of human mobility. Problematizing the phenomena requires one to distinguish between causes and correlations, and to engage with interactions between climate change and mobility on the one hand, as well as their nexus with the political economy of resource use, structural violence, and (under)development, on the other. Unpacking this nexus also implies lending attention to temporal dimensions of both movement and climate change impacts. Moreover, there is a dearth of statistics on climate immobility compared to climate migration which often blurs the linkages between gender, class, and social norms, as well as pre-existing fragile economic conditions caused by structural inequalities and violence. Making sense of climate change-related human mobility is to distinguish between slow on-set impacts from those of rapid on-set disasters, as both act as drivers of temporary, seasonal, long-term, permanent and/or protracted displacement. For instance, research on migration, mobility, and immobility engaging with migrants in the global south countries such as in Ghana, India, and Bangladesh (Adger et al., 2021) reveals that environmental threats are not the predominant driver of migration-related decisions. Rather, the trigger for ‘moving’ for people living in already climate-affected areas is much thought out combined with their existing multidimensional vulnerabilities, capabilities, and impetus (if any).

From a protection standpoint, taken together, the above intersections pose acute and timely questions for the livelihoods and human rights of impacted individuals and communities. They also beg consideration within the development sector around ‘resiliency-building’ approaches – Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and building back better to climate change, such as ‘adaptation’ and mitigation efforts that may prevent people from being forcibly displaced. In recent debates on climate change and migration, the focus on the figure of ‘environmental refugees’ has given ground to a broader conception of the ‘climate-migration’ nexus. In particular, the idea that migration can represent a legitimate adaptation strategy has emerged strongly (Black et al., 2011; Foresight report, 2011). However, the political and normative implications of this evolution are still understudied. Similarly, the multi-layered nature of migration needs to be engaged with, focusing on individual decision-making which cannot be narrowed down to push and pull factors alone. Therefore, it is important to draw on the intersectionality of migrants’ choices, livelihood stress, gendered capabilities, and aspirations of climate-vulnerable communities that create circular, temporary, seasonal, or permanent patterns of migration. All these aspects play a role beyond the push and pull factors of migration and present multi-layered causalities that contest the linear narrative of climate-induced migration (Shah & Lerche, 2020). Furthermore, as gender is progressively critical to migration as a process, and has expanded the realm of migration studies, deficient statistics on women’s experiences of mobility and immobility, and labor migration are rarely supported by updated evidence and data from region-specific and local contexts (UN, 2020).

Comparably, the political economy and ecology perspective is important to understand the livelihood crisis and related forced migration in littoral regions across the Indian Ocean world as elsewhere. This is largely because mobility is linked with the neoliberal politics of transregional development taking place across the Indian Ocean region through the creation of Special Economic Zones (for example, in Gujarat, India), China’s Belt and Road initiative in Pakistan’s Gwadar and Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port, modernist conservation programs that have created enclosures in the Bay of Bengal delta (Indian and Bangladesh Sundarbans, the Rann of Kutch, and Mozambique), and through other global recycling waste and fossil fuel industries (for example, the Rampal Thermal Power plant in Bangladesh’s Sundarbans, or the world’s largest ship breaking yard in Bangladesh – Chittagong – Sitakund costal belt). These emerging political economy processes complicate the climate-induced disaster scenarios in the Indian Ocean littoral as elsewhere. In this paper, we bring into conversation climate migration stories from two regions: South Asia and East Africa. Engaging with the literature as well as looking at empirical debates and discourses surrounding climate change-induced migration, we delve deeper to examine the intersections that produce diverse experiences among migrants along the lines of household assets, gender, age, socio-cultural norms, caregiving, and aspirations among communities – attributes that act both as drivers of and barriers to migration. In lieu with the 1951 Refugee Convention, the 2018 UN Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration does not have specific or distinct laws to protect climate refugees or recognize climate-induced displacement, despite acknowledging the rights of displaced groups. With time, UN bodies and the IOM (2020) considered that the term ‘refugee’ with its legal implications could not be attached to scenarios of environment and climate to include more categories such as ‘internally’ displaced. Eventually, refugee exchanged with the term ‘migrant’, is used as substitutable and generic, and does not imply the forcible conditions creating im-mobility; if anything, it implies a degree of individual agency to move. The term ‘environmentally/climate displaced’ is just as broad with no internationally putative definition of who is or what can define a ‘displaced person’. In this circumstance, internally displaced persons (IDPs) remain more appropriate nomenclature to define all displaced or mobile migrants affected directly or indirectly by changing climate and sea level rise impacts on coastal environments.

Decolonial approaches (Achiume, 2019) to migration and displacement critique the traditional pervasive northern predisposition which rarely considers the patterns of migration between, within and across countries of the global south. Two broad lines of research have branched out in migration studies which scholars anticipate will reinforce the need for ‘recentering the south’ (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2020; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh & Daley, 2018) as an inevitable constituent of the discipline in the coming years. First, historical research has shifted the lens from the characteristic south–north and east–west migration to the more endemic and immanent movements between and within the South-South. Second, ongoing research is embedded in individual country realities and local contexts at macro, meso, and micro-levels (Castelli, 2018), echoed earlier by Crate (2011, p. 175) who observed that climate change heralded a new direction through climate ethnography – a discipline that takes note of local contexts and one that anthropologists ‘should pursue’. Scholars of migration studies also caution that protecting environmental migrants with legalities may not be enough without weighing the interrelated, composite nature of socio-environmental concerns integrated into migration processes (Biermann & Boas, 2010; Byravan & Rajan, 2006). Anthropologist Kibreab (1997) and geographer Black (2001) were the first to criticize the unidimensional link between migration and environmental changes, opposing the neo-deterministic approach which simplified displacement as an isolated phenomenon devoid of local contexts, historical specificities, and cultural dimensions.

In this special issue theme, Deconstructing Climate Change and Migration Narratives in the Indian Ocean World, we explore this particular proliferating area of transregional (climate) migration within Africa and South Asia – in the Indian Ocean littoral. International and internal migration are motivated by a host of factors – economic necessities or opportunities, (or lack) of opportunities in host country, and dual factors of climate-related movement and im-mobility leading to internal displacements. In essence, (internal) migration in developing and poorer countries depends on the economic and non-economic costs of moving. The background of this issue navigates intra-regional migration within East Africa and South Asia. The existing fissure in migration studies is justifiable; so far it has broadly looked at international migration on a wider canvas from economic remittance perspective that communities use to ‘close adaptation financing gaps at the local level’, for climate resilience (Musah-Surugu, Ahenkan, Bawole, & Darkwah, 2017, p. 3) and preparedness, citizenship identity and formation and their related struggles. Until recent years, research on the subject has iterated the important social and economic contributions of internal migrants (Hickey & Yeoh, 2016), It has explored concerns such as leaving out internal migration dynamics in an economy. Progressively, at least the canvas has broadened, wherein academic research has begun to acknowledge the mounting complexities of human mobility that have engendered inconceivable struggles and gaps in policy responses, generated climate migrants, refugees, and displaced persons – terms that are fluid but without the necessary emotional and material security, perceived as ‘a factor that exacerbates the urban condition’ (Kibreab, 2007, p. 29). We emphasize that revisiting these identities is critical in the wider scheme of environment and economy, spatial aspects and geopolitics, poverty and livelihood building. A chunk of the research on internal mobility leaves out the other halves – im-mobilities and displacement. Following (Chaturvedi & Doyle, 2010) who argue against binaries in people’s im-mobilities, we review the within-country and cross-regional experiences of couched displacement, mobility/im-mobility, staying behind voluntarily or involuntarily.

As we demonstrate later in this paper, there is a paucity of comprehensive research and targeted data on internal migration flows, im-mobility, and displacement across most countries in Africa and Asia. The World Bank’s Groundswell Report, 2021 is a series of studies on climate-induced internal migration based on global projections of warming and hotspots which do not yet include a section on the Indian Ocean region including South Asia and East Africa (de Sherbinin et al., 2011; Rigaud, de Sherbinin, Jones, Arora, & Adamo, 2021). The IOM’s (2021) report on the East and Horn of Africa (EHoA) is more comprehensive, yet its Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) is currently active in six countries in the region collectively. Very few studies offer empirical evidences on environmental migration, and research is largely dependent on expedient organizational statistics of recognized global bodies.

Engaging with climate migration complexities: evidences from (East) Africa and South Asia

Climate change is visible but does not always form a direct constituent inter-alia driving mobilities and im-mobilities with long-drawn factors, i.e. population growth, under-development, mounting inequalities, weak governance, conflicts, and violence (IOM, 2016). According to Adamson and Tsourapas (2020) vast populations are living in or moving from one climate ‘hotspot’ to another in the face of uncertain migration policies, causes and impacts often and inevitably, non-climate determinants such as rising population, levels of resilience and capacity building, and governmental mechanisms impact movements across regions. Recurrently, movements have acquired a less voluntary nature, and are more intermittent, forced, and less calculative (Cohen, 1995). Local conditions that adversely impact lives and livelihoods trigger sporadic movements and relocation within countries in the global south, often through adaptation (IPCC, 2022) and likely causing different types of risks (Arnall, 2019; Correa, 2011; de Sherbinin et al., 2011; Wilmsen & Webber, 2015). Concurrently, scholarly literature in the past has suggested that migration as adaptation impairs communities’ social way of life, knowledge and cultural traditions (Adger, Barnett, Chapin, & Ellemor, 2011) and impedes human development. Yet, recent literature also reinforces the fact that mobility (and immobility) are critical to livelihood strategies (or the lack of it), with adaptation being a crucial response in certain countries of both South Asia and Africa, such as Ghana, Bangladesh, and India (Cundill et al., 2021). Further, growing evidences direct to the interlinkages between climate change, gender disparities, and socio-cultural factors affecting those already vulnerable groups, internally displaced people and migrants (women and girls) in East African region (Abebe, 2014; IOM, 2022), as well as reduced gender-induced im-mobility in India such as in the Bay of Bengal delta (Prati, Cazcarro, & Hazra, 2022).

Much of the substantiated literature has proffered a push–pull plus framework, emphasizing a host of drivers that define the circumstances, conditions, and the environment that create voluntary or involuntary forced movements, as also immobilities (Van Hear, Bakewell, & Long, 2018). Movements of international and internal migrants and refugees in post-colonial scenarios were in large part due to regime-based expulsions, economic motivations (Ravenstein, 1885), social factors, and political conflicts (Gould, 1995; Lee, 1966). Scholars have opined on the climate scenarios; that environmental stress and migration are causal (Koubi, Spilker, Schaffer, & Böhmelt, 2016) and multidimensional (McGregor, 1994). A body of empirical research highlights that scales of (low) development in poorer economies pointedly determine internal migration patterns. Much of the literature on global south countries has established that climate stress conditions in climate-fragile regions and internal migration are inter-related (IOM, 2016). A study of de jure asylum policies (Blair, Grossman, & Weinstein, 2021) of 92 countries from Africa, Middle East, and South Asia between 2000 and 2017 finds that forcibly displaced persons (FDPs) influence FDP flows in the global south. As more displaced people shift between and within developing countries, the number of disproportionate share increases FDPs.

Contrary to generalized ideas of regular economic migration in Africa, most African migrants are not crossing oceans, but crossing land borders within Africa. 94% of African migration across oceans is regular and most global migrants are not Africans. Moreover, although South Asia and Africa are not comparable in population and size, existing literature establishes that the countries in the continents are highly vulnerable to climate change (De Souza, et al., 2015; Krishnan, et al., 2019). South Asia has recorded one of the highest displacements (22%) in 2021 followed by East Asia and the Pacific (58%) and sub-Saharan Africa (11%). In East Africa and the Horn countries, 36.1 million people have been affected by drought (IDMC, 2022). Climate extremes being the causal drivers of forced or voluntary migration, immobility, and displacement, fueled by social and economic factors, climate change tends to be a threat multiplier. A very high percentage (95%) of internal displacements triggered by conflict and hostility in 2020 transpired in countries that are already vulnerable to climate change (IDMC, 2022). 20.5 million people are facing malnutrition and acute food insecurity in East African countries of Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia (IDMC, 2022). Over the last few decades, East Africa has experienced political turmoil, ethnic tensions, and violence. Yet, the region continues to be a host to displaced groups for decades. About 13.57 million people in East Africa are IDPs on account of protracted conflicts – a number that has exceeded the number of migrants in 2014. Displaced populations across international boundaries, who moved to Kenya, comprise nearly 83% (Migration Policy Institute report, 2023), which may likely elicit reluctance from the Kenyan government towards receiving refugees. Whereas in countries such as Somalia and Ethiopia, an estimated 2.97 and 4.97 million people respectively are internally displaced (UNHCR, 2022).

Large vulnerable populations in rural economies are dependent on eco-system-sensitive livelihoods in ecologically fragile, high-poverty regions (Tucker et al., 2015). Drought and insurgency have increasingly led to women and children account for a majority of the displaced population, and are also vulnerable to trafficking, the highest cases reported are from Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya (IOM, 2022). On the other hand, in South Asian countries such as India, a lack of disaggregated data and monitoring measures continue to be a deterrent in tracking and determining the scale and number of people in protracted displacement. Intraregional human movement is a constant in South Asian countries primarily for diversifying, and or supplementing income other than the usual dependencies on natural resources as most countries in the region have shared similarities – high population density, poor development, poverty, and socio-economic exclusion (Khadria, 2005). Aligned with these views, we take a step ahead to posit these in the local contexts of transregional and intraregional movements. With livelihoods endangered in some contexts, most people in South Asian countries are either displaced or migrate within the country or to neighboring countries, seeking adaptive or coping mechanisms, or simply moving to evade worsening conditions of poverty. Studies on rural markets and migration in India and Bangladesh, is characterized by labor movements (Deshingkar & Farrington, 2006; Seddon, 2004) of unskilled and semi-skilled workers to both international and domestic destinations. Despite India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan being the top 10 emigration countries in the world, trends in recent years demonstrate that internal migration outweighs international migration. Correspondingly, large-scale migration of about 1.6 million from Nepal to India through internal routes for employment opportunities is commonplace (Adhikary et al., 2020) Rural to urban migration is determined by scale of economic development, state formation, and demographic shifts (de Haas, 2010; de Haas et al., 2019; Skeldon, 1997). For instance, research indicates that rural outmigration in Bangladesh is a coping strategy (Bryan, Chowdhury, & Mobarak, 2014; Khandker, Khaleque, & Samad, 2011) while in Ethiopia, rural outmigration can be largely attributed to lack of access to land (Dessalegn, Debevec, Nicol, & Ludi, 2023).

Structural inequalities and poverty visibly become parameters for populations of poor women in low-income and vulnerable households to internally migrate in relatively short distances (Czaika, 2012) within the state, or relatively longer distances within the country. Within this paradigm, it is imperative to assess that the migration continuum (forced or voluntary) has another dimension – those who are incapable of moving or forced to stay behind. Relocation of displaced populations to economically strengthen them has failed; large-scale but poorly structured, financed, and implemented infrastructure projects have created perpetual displacement and disempowerment resulting in them being worse off than in their original place of stay. Mining-induced displacement of local communities in countries such as Zimbabwe (Gukurume & Felix, 2023) and ongoing large-scale displacement of indigenous communities in Odisha in the eastern belt of India (Outlook report, 2023) are continuously shaping current trends of people’s movements. The existing literature also offers insights on how climate change impacts conflict and migration by sparking outflow, and climate-induced migration incites conflicts in host areas. Scarcity (Reuveny, 2007; 2008) and resource competition (Homer-Dixon, 1999) in regions in Africa are often considered as trigger-points for climate change-induced conflict. Empirical studies on drought (Ocello, Petrucci, Testa, & Vignoli, 2015) have focused on the ‘environmental scarcity’ hypothesis findings which indicate that while recurrent droughts in the past diminished international migration (Findley, 1994); on the other end, it increased greater internal mobility, especially in the African context (Msigwa & Mbongo, 2013; Sow, Adaawen, Stephen, & Scheffran, 2014; Van der Land & Hummel, 2013). Short-term internal migration is set off by disasters which in turn affects labor markets, and even cultural normative practices are often reinforced due to structural inequities – early marriage, or lack of access to education in both host and receiving areas. Trans-border migration creates political, economic, and often socio-cultural repercussions for both migrant (and displaced and refugee groups) populations and for the host country, often creating immanent unrest over resource burden and shortage of economic resources for the latter. Correspondingly, it creates a sense of ‘othering’ and hostility for migrants and refugees who are perceived as ‘destitutes’ (Basu Ray Chaudhury & Ghosh, 2021). This has been apparent from the resulting social conflict and insecurity for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh (Kudrat-E-Khuda & Scott, 2020).

A study by the Pulitzer Center in 2021 finds that the long drawn out insurgency in Mozambique in East Africa, that was triggered from violence over natural resources and natural gas, has already displaced 800,000 people. Pastoralists across East Africa have been displaced by longstanding droughts and chronic poverty. In Turkana region in northwestern Kenya, climate shocks and drought have triggered higher internal migration and have compelled women to move internally (close to water bodies), or to cross borders. However, women who are left behind in households become ‘first responders’ (Greenpeace, 2021) when male members migrate for seeking work. They face a number of challenges due to social (gender) norms, lack of equitable access to basic resources, and lack of education, and few are able to move out after a long wait. Some emerging studies have indicated that women in communities, who have received tertiary education, are more likely to migrate seeking work opportunities (Ebrahimi & Ossewaarde, 2019). An ILO survey on cross-border labor migration and internal migration across districts in Bangladesh indicates that widowed, divorced, abandoned, or separated women, or those who had lost their lands and livelihoods, pursue opportunities as domestic and factory workers in India and the Middle-East as most viable destinations, to overcome gender biases. However, risks are sometimes inevitable with genuine cases of human rights abuse and sexual exploitation, or in cases where women have been depicted as victims of trafficking (ILO, 2021). Studies have also indicated that the COVID-19 outbreak reinforced the deep-entrenched gender inequalities particularly for women migrants (Ansar, 2022). Emerging studies are engaging with growing health challenges of female labor migrants, gender-based violence in conflict zones, and healthcare barriers of internally displaced women in Africa, underlining the need for policy interventions (Amodu, Richter, & Salami, 2020).

Migration in the Bay of Bengal delta

In this section, we aim at making sense of the evolving scenario on population mobility from Sundarbans’ villages (Bay of Bengal delta) to other parts of mainland India while connecting with people’s lived experiences in the delta. Post Aila cyclone in 2009, people migrated in large numbers to metropolitan cities and urban places from the Sundarbans delta. This trend has slowed down over the years, with many people having returned to their village, and they now move seasonally for work outside their village. While environmental stressors and uncertainties play a critical role in triggering mobility in the Sundarbans delta either through displacement caused by riverbank erosion and soil salinity (slow and rapid onset events), there are other socio-economic, aspirational, and structural factors at play that determine population mobility, and define who has the social capital to be mobile. During our fieldwork in August 2022 we recorded oral testimony from farmers who have migrated to Andhra Pradesh to work as wage laborers. The work seasonally during the sowing season for 60–75 days and earn $ 700 with a back-breaking 12-hour shift transplanting paddy.

While in the Sundarban during the non-cropping season government job card programs such as The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) only guarantees 100-man days in a year which has not been available to all, and such governmental support only generated $250. Often, the job card payments are delayed by government contractors and made long after the work is completed. This disincenstivises many households to depend on such program for their livelihood during the non-cropping season. The economic push and pull factors are also further reinforced by increasing vulnerability caused by delayed and failed monsoon. The sharp increase in migration of laborers from Sundarbans to Andhra Pradesh in 2022 post lockdown had led to a decrease in their income because of freely available labour. In 2018, the wage for transplantation of paddy per acre rose from $34 to $39. In 2022, it dropped to $36. The availability of surplus labor has potentially depressed wages. Despite this, villagers were keen to make the additional income from the seasonal migratory work as it gave them liquid cash to mitigate family emergencies, pay off their loans, build houses, and meet their daily expenses. The seasonal outmigration of male and female laborers is a new trend of population mobility and a form of coping mechanism in the region to address the uncertainties posed by the adversaries of climate change and loss of income during the non-cropping season. The wage laborers are treated well by the owners of the paddy farms who recognize sowing rice as a high skilled job which keeps the migrant farmers in relative demand. While there is a growing tendency to out-migrate from the delta, often this is temporary, circulatory, and short-lived, except for people who have been internally displaced because of riverbank erosion (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Nilima Mridha’s pukka home in Dayapur Village under construction from government loan and remittances sent by her husband and her own work in Andhra Pradesh. (Debojyoti Das).

Migration and immobility

While migration is a dominant feature of the Sundarbans today with male heads moving out to earn a living, immobility is also experienced in the form of returning migrants to their natal village annually, seasonally, and intermittently over the years. One migrant cited that they avail job cards and local employment, especially during the lean season, and engage in repair work of poor embankments, offered by authorities who employ local people as it made more sense for contractors to use human power than machines in these remote islands where it was difficult to move heavy machinery. Several small businesses have come up in the villages, as people do not find it cost-effective to come to the main market to buy goods. Despite uncertainties of businesses in the island, several migrants have stayed back and become immobile often due to obligation towards their families (Figure 2). Staying behind is often a decision based on one’s own economic situation and is also deeply intertwined with people’s attachment to their lands and kinship networks in villages. Migration is often the last port of call even for families who have been displaced by embankment breaches where their houses have been relocated to embankment sites (Figure 3).

Figure 2. Ganesh Maity, ice cream vendor who was earlier a migrant now settled in the village. (Debojyoti Das).

Figure 3. Shanti Gayne and her old home taken by embankment breach. She lives with her in-laws in a makeshift tent. (Debojyoti Das).

During the fieldwork at Bali Island in (August 2022), we interviewed members of Disha, an NGO working with ‘left-behind’ female householders and victims of domestic violence. They testified that they are training the women to be self-reliant through tailoring and embroidery work and engaging them to grow organic pulses, chilies, and other commercial crops which are sold through their village outlet shop. The women are also sensitized to child marriage, trafficking, and domestic violence. Widowed women who were once forced to migrate to Delhi for work, have built capacity to earn a living by tailoring. While the pattern of mobility from rural to urban has been highly gendered (male-dominated), local livelihood opportunities within rural areas enable women, particularly those in single-headed households to be self-reliant, preventing migration to an uncertain and precarious future.

The out-migration of parents has had a detrimental impact on their children’s wellbeing that emerged from the interview with the principal of a secondary school in the village of Dayapur. Nearly 40% of the students were from a family of migrants and a high dropout rate was prevalent due to lack of help at home to prepare meals, and the inability of the elderly relatives to provide them support, combined with the lockdown and study from home. Teachers with whom we interacted observed that there is a positive correlation between children who have been left behind by migrant parents and lack of motivation to attend schools regularly as they have been suffering from mental health issues and anxiety. Such scenarios have simultaneously led to a decline in the school’s academic standards due to poor performances of students. While none of the respondents directly made a causal link between climate change as a cause behind their choice to migrate, their narrative of the prevailing conditions was apparent. Some testimonies from villagers offered insights into what pushes them to migrate and are asynchronously linked with the uncertainties caused by changing, erratic rainfall pattern. For instance, a villager lamented that Amphan cyclone in 2020 led to saltwater embankment breaches in Mullakhali Island, followed by floods in 2021 where most of the standing crop was lost to water. By August 2022, the monsoon was delayed by several months leading to the declaration of drought and a paltry relief package announced by the West Bengal state government. These conditions have led to uncertainty for young (male) adults who are forced to move out of the village for work to support their family (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Drawing workshop on climate change and migration with school children at PC Sen School, Photo Credit: (Kaveri Mondol).

The climate migration debate as we have outlined in this section, is a complex labyrinth whereby various factors of mobility and immobility determine people’s ability to migrate under different circumstances. Consequently, climate change should be seen as a catalyst and not the primary cause behind people’s mobility. Climate migration or environmental refugeehood, thus, sounds like a misnomer if not looked from the lens of structural injustice in society. Further, one must not overlook that the process is not entirely isolated from power relations (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Sarati Katwa a displaced elderly in front her hut emplaced (relocated) by embankment erosion. Her son workers in Tamil Nadu, while she lives with her grandchildren as caregiver. (Debojyoti Das).

Geographer Tanya Matthan (2022) argues that ‘emerging climate risks are inseparable from the systematic risk of capitalist production, particularly in relation to India's ongoing agrarian crisis'. Similarly, Kasia Paprocki (2022) in the same volume argues that the impacts of climate change on rural environments should be understood from a long durée perspective, particularly looking at existing unequal power relations and inequalities within society. She introduces the idea ‘anticipatory ruination' to demonstrate how our ideas of climate change are fixed to the future detached from the risk posed by capitalist mode of production. She poignantly argues that ‘technocratic responses to climate change mask these historical and contemporary politics, often proposing anticipatory ruination through extraction or dispossession in agrarian landscapes under the guise of the imperatives of climate action'. To illustrate this point, during our interviews, we realised that the people who have been most mobile ‘seasonal migrants' were members of the village who in fact, had no land or had the bare minimum to grow subsistence rice. They were mostly landless peasants who merely had the land to live on the island, while many were relocated in tarpaulin tents as they lost their farmland to embankment breaches and riverbank erosion. Relatedly, capitalist aquaculture such as prawn hatching that has emerged as big business in neighbouring states like Andhra Pradesh and Orissa, has in the past decades, depressed the demand for prawn's-bagda in the Sundarbans. Contemporaneously, the incising resource control over the core area of the forest by the state's Forest Department has led to the decline in ecosystem services such that fishers could no longer depend upon the Sundarbans for their livelihood. This has encouraged people to move out of the region. Many migrants whom we interviewed had the collective response outlining ‘loss of livelihood', ‘non-secured farm income', ‘decline of fish stock' and their inability to get ‘year-round work' in delta villages despite government's promise of 100 days of employment during the lean agricultural season that is pushing them to move out of the village for work. Weather uncertainties produced by failed monsoon thus goes hand in hand with the livelihood insecurity that people are facing in Sundarbans villages. Several interviewees reported that the MGNREGS job card scheme has failed to take off in the village because much of the work is done by machined cranes and bulldozers hired by government contractors. Beyond this, the tussle between centre and the state government has led to freezing of MGNREGS funds. Intermittently, farmers get job card-based work in villages that are badly affected by riverbank erosion where remedial work is carried out by the Public Works Embankment Department (PWED) using human labour where machines cannot reach. Even then job cards can be secured by villagers who are votaries of the incumbent political party in power. This example clearly illustrates the embedded nature of unequal power relations within society that is often masked within the climate change debate and the migration narrative simplified within technocratic jargons such as ‘slow onset' and ‘rapid onset' events within the ‘climate change futures’ narrative.

The ‘environmental refugeehood’ debate, must be understood from the perspective of migrants themselves. The envisioned future of the people of Sundarbans and the restitution of their livelihood can only be imagined from their narratives and motivations of migration. One must untangle the overlapping linkages between climate uncertainty and ingrained inequitable social relational and power dynamics within societies. Whereas rural-urban migration in India’s burgeoning industry sectors has multiplied; on the other end of the migration continuum, urban-rural pattern of migration too has scaled up. Seasonal and temporary forms of (internal) migration is in motion; nonetheless, rural-rural migration flows remain high in South Asia (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Nineteen-year-old Lokesh Mondol on a vacation returning to his village from Bangalore on Raksha Bandhan, a festive day celebration for siblings (Photo Credit: Debojyoti Das).

Climate change, migration and displacement: evidences from the Indian Ocean Region

African and South Asian countries show high prevalence of internal, regional migration. Despite that East Africa is one of the predominant regions that hosts and receives the largest refugee populations among the global south countries, the nature of movements are often other than forced, also reactive, arising out of poverty, drought, and conflicts. Despite figures from large global and multilateral systems such as member bodies of the UN, data on migration in African countries and South Asia is indeterminate as it is largely fragmented. In India, policies for small town and regional development have conventionally overlooked local particularities and national macroeconomic policies in local development efforts (Satterthwaite & Tacoli, 2003). Secondly, empirical research on longitudinal migration flow data (Vinke, Bergmann, Blocher, Upadhyay, & Hoffmann, 2020) that captures movements of migrants and im-mobilities of non-migrants is still sparse. Irrespective of the ‘migration as adaptation’ framework which is broadly conceptualized, the myriad and intangible ways in which people in developing countries in Africa ‘manage climate variation is poorly understood’ (Mueller, Sheriff, Dou, & Gray, 2020, p. 1). Even more so, this is conspicuous in countries like India, often disregarding that effective adaptation can reduce non-economic losses and boost social connectivity. Intra-regional migration constitutes a large part of East Africa (Nyaoro, 2010) whereas in South Asia’s migration canvas, these trends may exceed or even be less than given projections in national/regional level data (Srivastava & Pandey, 2017).

Migration flows within Africa – between African countries, regions, and borders – in recent years despite being recurrent, have gained less attention compared to migration from Africa to Europe, in migration policy and related research. Since the time of the European migrant refugee situation in 2015, global media images scattered on the internet (and still widely circulated) are palpable; crammed boats huddling African migrants from across the Mediterranean to Europe speculated that African migrants were indeed deluging Europe (Whitaker, 2017). The effective ‘data visualizations’ of ‘unstoppable’ (Risam, 2019, p. 1) Africans migrating, magnified the existing notions around international and intercontinental migration flows. Even by the perceived, estimated scale of movements during the crisis, the migration numbers by the UNHCR (2015, 2020) (nearly 1,000,000 migrants or refugees or probably both) were heavily criticized by Africa-focussed reporting news and research network groups,¹ who appealed that Africa’s emigration landscape is misrepresented– contrary to notions, first, that Europe does not top the preferred destination list; second, most Africans who did or do migrate to Europe are largely equipped with postgraduate education; and third, a majority of migrants choose to settle in other African countries and surrounding border-sharing countries. Internet search on the subject is telling: keywords ‘Africa’, ‘India’, ‘climate’, ‘conflict’, ‘internal’/‘intra-regional’ migration, and ‘internally displaced’ usually bring up generic results on international migration, remittance from Africa to the United States or Europe, and even fewer results on South Asia, India, and regional migration. The same persists when using words ‘Indian Ocean Region’ and ‘intra-regional/internal’ migration that throws a wider array of results on slave trade and historical literature on the latter.

Institutional measures of regulation, containment, and control have been recurrent in Africa’s colonial history. Recognizing the perils of refugees and those affected by combined ravages of colonialism, liberation wars, and nation-building, the African Union Convention (the Kampala Convention 2009) broadened the definition to acknowledge internally displaced persons, making further amends to the Organization of Africa Unity (OAU). However, internal struggles continue due to the intersectional issues of poverty, climate, and conflicts, and a threat to human rights as safety net. In 2018, the BBC carried a contentious news citing a European official (also an Africa Commissioner) on the potential of foreign-run charter cities in Africa for employment generation and development, and to curb migration to Europe. While a few vehemently criticized it, the idea seemed a possibility for a few Africans, one of whom was quoted as saying that they were willing to give into ‘voluntary colonialism’, only if it would ‘benefit Africans, not foreign powers’ (BBC, 2018²). Five years hence, the migration tide has shifted, having regained an endogenous nature with internal migration, and more populations moving to contiguous border countries. Concomitantly, a renewed interest in the continent's agricultural land, oil, and natural resources surged (BBC, 2020³), even as the Africa Union (AU) continues to endeavour towards meeting the Agenda 2063 for sustainable development and high economic growth. Concurrently, at the other end of the movement/migration spectrum, South Asia’s emigration landscape is conventionally class-based to a point; urban classes migrate for higher (global) education, in contrast to internal migration that is highly and increasingly prevalent within its rural and urban low-income groups. Steadily with the environment-migration linkage unfolding as reality to policymakers and national and state bodies, greater focus is on the diverse, intrinsic patterns of movement; migration and human mobilities and im-mobilities within and between countries and borders. In the absence of exhaustive data on intra-country and border migration flows in low-income countries, constraints remain in estimating the degree to which populations are affected or at (individual) risks (Kniveton, Schmidt-Verkerk, Smith, & Black, 2008). Moreover, lack of forethought, possibilities, and pre-emptive measures among state and government mechanisms to gauge movements, assess patterns of mobility/im-mobilities or displaced persons, and handle and track people’s movements (Dijstelbloem, 2017), hinders appropriate policy responses at the regional, local, and national scales. East Africa has been at the center of the migration flow dynamics with large-scale movements since the early nineties. Population growth in East Africa has contributed to land fragmentation resulting in rural to urban migration. The region has been known to have a history of internal displacement and refugee flows majorly due to conflicts (Fischer & Vollmer, 2009). Studies by Rigaud et al. (2018) in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda as a cluster, describe these as climate in- and out-migration hotspots. Over the years, forced displacement is on the rise from DRC, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Rwanda and Burundi, Mozambique and Madagascar to Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Studies on East Africa’s migration flows indicate characteristic patterns of in-migration to ‘prospective’ rural and urban areas. As was in Kenya (Gould, 1995), diminished soil quality led to income diversification; whereas, foreign investors’ scramble for oil in northern Kenya displaced several communities comprising pastoralists. For instance, studies of pastoralists in dryland Africa reveal that they have had limited mobility within their livelihood systems, but moving to urban centers for income diversification is prompted by prolonged economic and political marginalization (Hesse & Cotula, 2006). Studies on climate and formal and informal institutions have ascertained the correlative effects between climate stress and social dynamics. For instance, a migration study in Ethiopia (Mueller & Gray, 2012) finds that rainfall deficits triggered a rise in labor migration and consequently caused female out-migration due to matrimony.

Colonial policies, structural inequalities, and enervative governments, and contemporary political scenarios have influenced the trajectory of regional migration in East Africa. Yet, relative similarities in culture, potential agency, and ‘harsh nature of refugee and IDP camps’ (Nyaoro, 2010, p. 15) are easier parameters that push people to pursue rural-to-urban migration and intraregional relocation. This has led to widespread informal settlements creating ‘cities within cities’, which shape labor and commerce among other socio-economic divides. Across most developing countries, the linkages of poverty-mobility/im-mobility-urbanization – each have inevitable and mutual impact. Pastoralists in drylands have had limited mobility within their livelihood systems, but moving to urban centers for income diversification is prompted by prolonged economic and political marginalization (Hesse & Cotula, 2006). Steadily we anticipate that intra-regional migration in developing countries is likely to gain wider attention in the post-pandemic world, and their mutual effects on economic costs and benefits and its relevance to employment, reorganizational social and kinship structures, and bi-mobility that are decisive factors in migration decisions (Cohen, 1995). There is relatively more expedited figures on regional migration in East Africa compared to earlier data but not adequately comprehensive to make future projections (Black, Hilker, & Pooley, 2004). Moreover, existing data are also not often sex/gender-disaggregated (Bell et al., 2015). Autonomous female migration for employment (Campani, 1995) has risen in South Asia and East Africa, as it has in the global south. Earlier studies suggest the frequency of this trend in urban informal sectors and gendered labor divisions in sub-Saharan Africa (Gugler, 1989), in Bangladesh (Rashid, 2013), and India (Shanthi, 2006). In 2019, women in the Indian Ocean Rim region comprised an estimated 43% of all international migrants from the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) member states which stood at 19 million (UN, 2018). Between 1990 and 2019, women migrants’ numbers in 10 of the IORA countries increased while it has declined in 10 countries – more women migrated between countries including Kenya, Mozambique, and Tanzania among others. However, these data are not apprised to assess women migrants in the region after 2019 and in the post-pandemic phases. In the absence of refined and (granular) data, it is difficult to discern whether these are women migrants who are workers reliant on climate-sensitive livelihoods, or non-working women accompanying the family and (male migrants), or even victims of trafficking, throughout the different stages of migration. Hence, addressing systematic gender inequalities and gender-embedded issues can shape or affect migration. For instance, the shortfall in evidence-based data on African female labor migration and that of South Asian women’s labor migration in national statistical survey offices visibly effaces any gender-based evaluation of women’s experiences of mobilities and im-mobilities. The migration and labor statistics by the National Statistical Office (NSO) in Africa (Abel, 2022) and India (NSO, 2021) are not exhaustive; it is not gender-disaggregated; neither do they provide updated, present-time statistics on different patterns of labour migration or women’s intersectional experiences of out-migration and mobility.

Indian Ocean Region and its contextual significance in environmental migration

Past research on migration in Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean region spanning pre-modern – trading diasporas, slavery and indentured labour to recent past trends, recognizes the phenomenon as complex and for economic gains (Cohen, 1995; Lee, 1966; Ravenstein, 1885). Political and historical changes, ecological and economic catastrophes, and political and ethnic conflicts are crucial attributes to the growing populations of economic migrants and refugees (including internally displaced persons). Empirical research on climate and human mobilities affirms that climate and geography deeply affect population growth and distribution (Berlemann & Steinhardt, 2017). In the last three decades, the major part of the migration trajectory has been intraregional in the Indian Ocean littoral with mounting and sporadic movements between and within developing countries. The Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) member states represent diverse economies primarily as the Indian Ocean littoral region is a pivotal point in the global south as sustainable development goals merge with key human rights protection instrument in addressing human development and gender-equitable measures. Towards this direction, the IORA can have potentially differing or even opposing outcomes for gender-responsive labour markets. In the last few years, female labour force participation has declined in seven countries out of 22 (World Bank, 2020). Time-use data in 10 IORA countries indicate that women perform three hours more daily in unpaid domestic work compared to men and women dedicate more hours of total work than men (UNSD, 2018). In terms of internal migration, a dearth of accurate data impinges the environmental and climate migration trajectory, since movement within national borders is less discernible, and most countries lack formal registration for tracking internal movements. The IOM conceptualized the ‘migration as adaptation’ as a framework into practice-oriented discourses upholding organizational efforts of climate migration management (Felli, 2013) and downplayed the failure of adaptation as migration within the ‘climate and refugee’ narrative. Scholars have argued that the right development initiatives can prevent maladaptation and cyclic poverty, reduce relocation, creating more choices for people to stay on their volition in their preferred place of origin (Upadhyay, 2014). It can enable to perceive environmental migration as forcible movement, to one that accentuates the agency and capacity of migrants to respond to climate disasters with proactive governed and facilitated adaptation actions (Piguet, 2013). Disadvantaged groups with limited capacity to resources in intra-regional or intra-country migration are less likely to move, thereby seeking coping measures to adapt such as alternate local opportunities for income diversification. Within the migration-adaptation linkage, there is little research on the direct (or indirect) impacts of environmental factors on income diversification and mobility and im-mobility. Aid and rapid humanitarian responses for populations affected by climate disasters may not hasten migration for adaptation.

Conclusions

Conceptualizing the climate-migration nexus and the climate-adaptation-agency nexus merits well-defined, (and even measured) studies on the importance of scale of movements. Undoubtedly, intraregional and interregional migration are emerging as central to climate migration and within migration studies as a discipline. Thus far, movements have been studied from the lens of remittance and employment opportunities that were assumed as explicit motivations. Keeping this as the underpinning, we have focused on regions of East Africa and South Asia in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) to look at implicit conditions that spur internal movements but also create im-mobilities. Yet, as the literature indicates, migration is complex, and driven by composite factors ranging from aspirations to social status, and from resilience to environmental and economic shocks. The review of literature also engages with some of the gaps in research on intraregional and interregional migration in the Indian Ocean littoral. We propose that more micro-level research on local contexts, household-level movements, and gender-disaggregated information in the global south countries can facilitate focused research on transregional migration and displacement. The various tracking matrix of intergovernmental organizations (even if currently delimited), such as the IOM’s Regional Data Hub (RDH) since its inception in 2018 among such other, for the East and Horn of Africa (EHoA) has developed and continues to build on the regional migration flows’ dynamics and research using expedient evidence-based data. Empirical studies are steadily giving gainful thrust that the regions deserve, even as we are mindful of the fact that existing data on climate migrants and refugees is limited in the context of South Asia and in India, and warrant urgent responsiveness. We value the recognition of micro-data for migration analysis and household-level studies that identify heterogeneities that shape temporary migration decisions and flows across urban and rural labour markets in East African countries (Mueller et al., 2020). Equally useful are quantitative and modeling studies on human migration such as those in other parts of Africa (Garcia, Pindolia, Lopiano, & Tatem, 2015).

However, a lack of current research on contemporary movements in the IOR necessitates a revisit to this space, which so far has a rich body of scholarly historical migration perspective. The paper demonstrates that migration is a multifaceted phenomenon and climate change is an important trigger nested in an extensive set of social and economic determinates that shape people’s decision to migrate. The IOR is an emerging area for exploring climate-induced migration and displacement (as also economic mobility and vulnerabilities) owing to its criticality in trade and multilateral relations, as also it is a sensitive hub for conflicts, climate change, and evolving power corridors (such as the competing interest between India and China for regional development) and economic developments. Much of these key areas will be determined by large and (unchecked) migrant flows across the region, migration patterns, and changing socio-economic events, and the possibility of security and governance issues, especially in the absence of robust social protection measures against environmental threats and structural inequities, conflicts, and multidimensional poverty. Moreover, with the increasing feminization of informal labour, and women adding to the numbers of labour migrants, the intergenerational mobility trends in the IOR countries will be decisive. We reckon that these are motivations for further refined data availability and conducting research in the IOR as also at national levels in the rest of the global south countries.

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Notes on contributors

Debojyoti Das

Dr Debojyoti Das is a social anthropologist, geographer and science policy expert. His work is deeply interdisciplinary, bridging his training as an anthropologist with visual and action research tools. He has introduced exhibitions and field trips as extracurricular activities to engage students in outdoor visual and multimedia projects. He believes in practice-based learning. His current research focuses on climate education, migration, disaster risk reduction, livelihood and environmental degradation issues in the global south focusing on trans-regional comparison in Indian Ocean rim countries.

Srija Basu

Dr Srija Basu has pursued her doctoral research on climate change, gender and policy in the global south, as a comparative between South Asia and Africa, and a Masters in Gender Studies from SOAS, UK. Dr Basu engages in interdisciplinary areas related to climate change and policy, livelihoods, sustainable development, gender rights, and social protection. She is a published author and panel speaker on climate change, migration and displacement, and gender equity, and livelihoods in the Global South.

Notes

1 See East Africa monitor and Afrobarometer. https://eastafricamonitor.com/fact-check-how-african-migration-is-misrepresented-by-western-media/.

2 See BBC. (2018). Can ‘voluntary colonialism’ stop migration from Africa to Europe? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-46017551.

3 See BBC. (2020). How Africa hopes to gain from the ‘new scramble’. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51092504.