PROJECT INFORMATION
Principal investigator (PI):
Paula Margaretic , Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago de Chile, Chile
Contact – Email: paumargaretic@gmail.com
Duration & amount:
(July 2024 – April 2026). USD 99,600
Participating countries:
Argentina y Chile
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Keywords: Climate-induced migration, fast-onset and slow-onset meteorological events, origin- and destination-network effects, neighboring countries
This project aims to investigate two significant aspects of international migration. First, the project proposes a global framework (including 150 countries worldwide) to study the relationship between climate change and migration. Our dataset spans 30 years, from 1990 to 2017. To characterize countries, we include proxies for fast- and slow-onset meteorological events to measure the countries’ exposure to climate change and a large set of country-specific socioeconomic, demographic, health, political, and governance factors driving international migration. Second, the project analyzes the role of neighboring countries on migration flows. To identify neighboring countries, we consider geographical proximity and economic and cultural proximity between pairs of countries.
The main contributions of this project are as follows. First, we include a broad set of environmental variables with global coverage, which allows us to incorporate climate change aspects into the migration analysis. Furthermore, since climate change impacts migration differently across countries, this study will enable the design of country-specific policies to manage climate-induced migration. Second, considering a large set of country-specific socioeconomic, political, and demographic characteristics will allow us to i) explore the contextual causes of migration and their dynamics, ii) disentangle the patterns distinguishing developed and developing economies through time, iii) quantify the feedback effects from socioeconomic shocks affecting migration and reversely. Third, we propose a methodology to predict the expected impact on migration of the two significant global shocks: the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukrainian war. We will also project international migration flows assuming various simulated climate change patterns. Predicting migration is appealing as there is a significant lag in the migration data to be released.
