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Climatic conditions are weak predictors of asylum migration

Recent research suggests that climate variability and change significantly affect forced migration, within and across borders. Yet, migration is also informed by a range of non-climatic factors, and current assessments are impeded by a poor understanding of the relative importance of these determina...

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Autores principales: Schutte, Sebastian, Vestby, Jonas, Carling, Jørgen, Buhaug, Halvard
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8024373/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33824306
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22255-4
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author Schutte, Sebastian
Vestby, Jonas
Carling, Jørgen
Buhaug, Halvard
author_facet Schutte, Sebastian
Vestby, Jonas
Carling, Jørgen
Buhaug, Halvard
author_sort Schutte, Sebastian
collection PubMed
description Recent research suggests that climate variability and change significantly affect forced migration, within and across borders. Yet, migration is also informed by a range of non-climatic factors, and current assessments are impeded by a poor understanding of the relative importance of these determinants. Here, we evaluate the eligibility of climatic conditions relative to economic, political, and contextual factors for predicting bilateral asylum migration to the European Union—a form of forced migration that has been causally linked to climate variability. Results from a machine-learning prediction framework reveal that drought and temperature anomalies are weak predictors of asylum migration, challenging simplistic notions of climate-driven refugee flows. Instead, core contextual characteristics shape latent migration potential whereas political violence and repression are the most powerful predictors of time-varying migration flows. Future asylum migration flows are likely to respond much more to political changes in vulnerable societies than to climate change.
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spelling pubmed-80243732021-04-21 Climatic conditions are weak predictors of asylum migration Schutte, Sebastian Vestby, Jonas Carling, Jørgen Buhaug, Halvard Nat Commun Article Recent research suggests that climate variability and change significantly affect forced migration, within and across borders. Yet, migration is also informed by a range of non-climatic factors, and current assessments are impeded by a poor understanding of the relative importance of these determinants. Here, we evaluate the eligibility of climatic conditions relative to economic, political, and contextual factors for predicting bilateral asylum migration to the European Union—a form of forced migration that has been causally linked to climate variability. Results from a machine-learning prediction framework reveal that drought and temperature anomalies are weak predictors of asylum migration, challenging simplistic notions of climate-driven refugee flows. Instead, core contextual characteristics shape latent migration potential whereas political violence and repression are the most powerful predictors of time-varying migration flows. Future asylum migration flows are likely to respond much more to political changes in vulnerable societies than to climate change. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-04-06 /pmc/articles/PMC8024373/ /pubmed/33824306 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22255-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2021, corrected publication 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Schutte, Sebastian
Vestby, Jonas
Carling, Jørgen
Buhaug, Halvard
Climatic conditions are weak predictors of asylum migration
title Climatic conditions are weak predictors of asylum migration
title_full Climatic conditions are weak predictors of asylum migration
title_fullStr Climatic conditions are weak predictors of asylum migration
title_full_unstemmed Climatic conditions are weak predictors of asylum migration
title_short Climatic conditions are weak predictors of asylum migration
title_sort climatic conditions are weak predictors of asylum migration
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8024373/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33824306
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22255-4
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