How climate change affects migration

As climate change progresses, it will force parts of the world’s population, particularly in the developing world, to move or be unable to leave. Farmers, for example, may find themselves both unable to grow crops on salt-infused soil and trapped in place due to a lack of capital.

That’s the topic that Mia McElhatton, a fourth-year philosophy major from Philadelphia, is exploring in her research with an undergraduate research grant from the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy, supported by the Association of Alumnae Rosemary D. Mazzatenta Scholars Award.

She is examining both mobility and immobility, which are core to understanding the effects of climate change. “Climate-induced mobility can represent a distinct harm,” she says.

Much of her research so far has been reviewing prior literature, investigating sources in political science, economics, population studies, legal scholarship, and philosophy. She has interviewed people involved with forced migration efforts and has received special support and guidance on climate change politics from Guy Grossman, co-director of the Penn Development Research Initiative. She plans to also examine studies of specific geographic areas and find testimonies on migration’s causes and effects. “A lot of it is philosophical research, focusing on reading a variety of theoretical frameworks and case studies and thinking out how they fit together,” McElhatton says.

The term “climate refugee,” which has been increasingly used in the media and among policymakers, actually has no legal force or meaning, McElhatton says. “For the legal system to attend to it, we need to articulate what the specific harm is and suggest implications from that for domestic or international legal systems,” she says. She hopes that her research will help articulate that harm and be used in subsequent research that defines a different term or legal status for the affected population.

McElhatton hopes that her research will help. “You can’t come up with the proper solutions unless you understand the problem,” McElhatton says. “These questions of justice and understanding what the harm is and what obligations and responsibilities come out of that” is essential to the process.

“Articulating these harms hopefully clarifies what is actually going on, and the ways in which people can assist,” she says.

Her interest in her research topic began last year, taking a Penn Carey Law class on refugee and asylum law with Fernando Chang-Muy, Thomas O’Boyle Adjunct Professor of Law, and working with Esperanza Immigration Legal Services. She combined that with prior research she had done with Kok-Chor Tan, chair of the Department of Philosophy and her research advisor, on climate change and justice, and she narrowed her focus while studying in Mexico City last spring when she witnessed the effects of climate change, including air pollution and contaminated water. “All those things just kept coming together,” she says.