The interactive effect of climatic events and political violence on household migratory decisions in Indonesia

• In Event: Borders, Bodies, and Security: Climate Change and Global Inequality

Abstract

While many recent studies have explored the effect of climate change on individual migratory decisions, there is little existing work on the effects of climate change on the migratory decisions of those who are also experiencing political violence. Furthermore, recent qualitative research suggests that families facing political violence and uncertainty make decisions at the household level, a finding that has not been adequately adopted in the quantitative migration literature. To bridge these gaps, this study asks: how do slow-onset environmental shocks (droughts, flooding, extreme heat) impact the household migratory decisions of people also experiencing political instability/violence?

To carry out this study, I utilize the Indonesian context because it has a well-documented history of slow-onset environmental change and political violence. I combine a series of datasets to create social, environmental, and political variables that I use to predict household migration. First, I use the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) to gain social and demographic data on Indonesian families over time, including details on internal and international migrations at the household level. Next, I link geographic data from NASA’s Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications 2 (MERRA-2), which has tracked historic rainfall and temperature patterns for Indonesia from 1980 until present day. Finally, I create a violence index variable from several indicators in the National Violence Monitoring System Database (NVMS). I also include a number of control variables known to affect migratory decisions from the general migration literature. To analyze these data, I employ discrete time-event analyses to explore how the slow-onset climate change interacts with social and political circumstances to predict migration over time. In doing so, I hope to understand how people experiencing political violence and environmental stress make migratory decisions to manage risk at the household level.

Author

• Michael Andrew Middleton, University of California-Davis