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Natural Hazards, Internal Migration and Protests in Bangladesh

Kristina Petrova
Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Centre of Natural Hazards and Disaster Science, Uppsala University

Abstract/ Executive Summary:

Does internal migration following natural hazards increase the likelihood of protests in migrant-receiving areas? To address the question, this study first looks at the extent to which experiencing different forms of natural hazards contributes to a household’s decision to leave their district of residence. In a second step, the article explores whether that internal migration flow increases the number of protest events in migrant-hosting districts. In doing so, it contributes to the existing debate on the extent to which natural hazards impact the likelihood of social contention and the role of migration as a linking pathway in that relationship. The impact of climate-related shocks may erode household assets and therefore adaptive capacity in ways that can eventually influence decisions to migrate to larger urban centers. Although migrants are agents of economical and technological change, urban environments may impose challenges to recently arrived migrants and their host communities, affecting the motivations and mobilization resources of urban social groups to protest. As a consequence, the probability of urban unrest in these locations is expected to increase. To test this, I use geo-referenced household-level data from Bangladesh for the period 2010–15, which records households’ experiences of different forms of natural hazard and internal migration flows, available from the Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey. It combines this with data on protests, derived from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data. Findings suggest that flood hazards in combination with loss of assets increase the likelihood of internal migration, but unlike other types of domestic mobility, hazard-related migration does not increase the frequency of protests in migrants’ districts of destination. Keywords Bangladesh, internal migration, natural hazards, protests, quantitative analysis

Keywords: Bangladesh, Internal migration, Natural hazards, Protests, Quantitative analysis

Location: In Bangladesh

Start Date:

End Date:

Program Area: Risk Management in Agriculture

Non-commodity: Climate change, Migration

Objectives:

To trace the effect of natural hazards on protests as a social outcome, while isolating the effect of different types of migration from other determinants of protests.

Methodology:

The case of Bangladesh: Bangladesh is often mentioned when discussing dire climatic change impacts (Kumari Rigaud et al., 2018). The country is located in the Bay of Bengal, a large deltaic area, highly exposed to natural hazards such as floods, droughts, cyclones and riverbank erosion (IPCC, 2018). Even though Bangladesh has always been flood-prone and many of its agricultural activities depend on seasonal inundation, climate projections suggest that flooding will increase due to irregular rainfall, intensified cyclone activity and river run-off (IPCC, 2018). Because flooding is a commonly occurring climatic shock and government institutions are weak, rural households have over a long period of time developed a range of adaptation strategies, with seasonal migration being a key component (McLeman, 2017). Even though Bangladesh has certainly improved early warnings and the development of evacuation plans, the projected negative consequences of climate change may mean that people are often unable to return home and are forced to relocate. Research design: The theoretical argument suggests that higher levels of disaster-related migration increase the likelihood of protest through grievances and resource mobilization for both migrants and host urbanites. To evaluate this expectation, I first rely on household-level data to distinguish natural hazard-related migration from other sources of mobility. Since data on internal migration rarely include stated reasons for migration, it is difficult to separate economic or even violence-driven responses from those preceding natural hazards. Therefore, the article first determines whether natural hazards contributed to the household-level decision to migrate. Following expectations from the migration literature that decisions are not made by migrants alone, but by households (Stark & Bloom, 1985), the unit of analysis is the household-year with binary measurements of migration as a dependent variable and experienced natural hazards as a main independent variable. In the second step, the data are used to analyze the relationship between immigration flows – separating between hazard-induced and other migration – and the frequency of protests in migrant hosting districts for each year. Constructing natural hazard-related migration- Dependent variable: Internal migration- To measure internal rates of migration, I rely on the Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS). BIHS is conducted in two rounds – in 2011–12, and in 2015 (IFPRI, 2016; Ahmed, 2013). BIHS is a nationally representative survey project, administered to the same sample of households (6,503) in both rounds with an annual temporal resolution, which allows for creating a panel dataset.1 All variables on the household level are geolocated to the 64 districts (second-order division levels) in Bangladesh. BIHS contains information on the spatial location of a migrants’ district of origin and destination for the last five years. This allows for creating a binary variable of whether a household member migrated from the current district of residence or not in a given year. In the first survey wave, respondents recalled when a member migrated from 2006 to 2012. The second survey wave asks: ‘Has any member of your household migrated since the baseline survey?’ which then generates time-series data for the period 2012–15. This results in a panel data set from 2006–15 with information on internal migration estimates per district and year in Bangladesh.

Source of Information: Journal of Peace Research; 2021, Vol. 58(1) 33–49

Article Link (Online Journal): DOI: 10.1177/0022343320973741

Funding Source:

Budget:

Total Budget (Tk.) :

Achievement/Findings:

Using fine-grained data from Bangladesh, this article studies the relationship between households’ experience of different types of natural hazards such as floods and droughts, their decision to internally migrate and the frequency of protests in migrant-hosting districts. The first part of the analysis shows that members of households are likely to relocate after a natural hazard, but only when they have experienced certain subsequent asset losses. Estimated results, presented, further suggest that experiencing flood hazard with reported losses in crop yield have no effect on the likelihood of domestic migration, whereas drought-induced crop losses decrease the risk of migration at the 10% level, suggesting that liquidity constraints play an important role. As opposed to damages that could be harder to recover from, such as losing land, livestock or house plot, crop yield losses might increase the likelihood of migration after a household experience such loss for consecutive years. Even though some previous studies have found crop failure to be an important factor for human mobility (Gray & Mueller, 2012), operationalized crop losses due to flood and drought in my data might not be able to capture the accumulative effect of such shocks. If it is indeed the case that climate-related migrants have grievances that they are unable to effectively communicate in their hosting areas due to high social and economic marginalization, then appropriate governing strategies can help facilitate this communication and enhance resilience. Policies, for example, should be flexible enough to allow for people to decide for themselves where they prefer to live, and to meet their needs therein. Social assistance, integration schemes and committed investments in urban infrastructure can provide substantial benefits to both origin and destination places, as well as to the migrants themselves. These policies could aim at facilitating more equitable access to basic social services among city dwellers and in that way address, the motives of urban groups to (not) protest their government. Through such approaches, policies would refocus from questions of political stability and security towards providing strategies to enhance societal resilience to climate change.

Knowledge Management: Journal