A New Interdisciplinary Framework for Studying the Relation between Climate Change and Migration

The program aims to establish a bold interdisciplinary research environment comprising the natural and social sciences to examine how climate change affects migration processes in three of the world’s most populated mountain areas.

As some of the most vulnerable regions to climate change, mountain regions showcase how climate change affects migration, but also how it intersects with other drivers in complex constellations.The program brings together leading scientists from climatology and a variety of social sciences.

Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods ranging from ethnographic fieldwork to non-linear modelling methods, the program will construct and test a novel analytical framework to comprehend the complex interrelationships between various drivers of migration.

Taking the climate-migration nexus as a context for elaborating novel climate models that are informed by in-depth local level research, the program will generate solid scientific knowledge on a crucial but less understood aspect of the relation between climate change and migration, i.e. how different drivers interact in complex constellations and, in specific contexts, what makes certain drivers more decisive.In collaboration with the Dept. of Earth Sciences, the program is based at the School of Global Studies and the Centre on Global Migration at the University of Gothenburg and runs from 2022 to 2027.

It involves senior and junior scholars, and research partners in the regions of study.