Search

Later‐life migrants, as older people living away from their home nations, occupy multiply‐precarious positions in relation to national COVID‐19 pandemic responses. Concern has particularly centred on this group's increased risk of social and linguistic exclusion. We explore the perspectives of later‐life older Chinese and Koreans living in New Zealand during the nation's COVID‐19 lockdown of 2020. This paper presents a sub‐analysis of culturally‐matched interviews conducted with 3 Korean and 5 Chinese later‐life migrants. These participants are a sub‐sample of a larger qualitative interview study comprising 44 interviews. A social capital approach has been used to aid conceptualisation of participants' experiences and a reflexive thematic approach guided analysis. Despite their underrepresentation in national response efforts, Chinese and Korean later‐life migrants resourcefully participated in ethnically‐specific pandemic initiatives. Three themes identified were: (1) taking it seriously (2) already digitally literate (3) challenges and difficulties. Older Asian migrants engaged in a range of creative strategies to stay connected during COVID‐19 lockdowns which drew heavily on pre‐existing social capital. Future pandemic responses should seek to improve connectedness between the national government COVID‐19 response and older Korean and Chinese later‐life migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of the international migration of health workers in recent decades has taken place in the context of the transnationalisation of healthcare provision as well as of governance and policy responses. This paper examines international policy responses to cross‐border health worker migration in the Asia Pacific region. These include multilateral (global and regional) and bilateral policy agreements, policy dialogue and programmes of action in relation to key issues of ethical recruitment, ‘circular’ migration and labour rights and key themes of health workforce planning and management. The paper brings original new analysis of international datasets and secondary data to bear on the pressing and important questions of what international policy initiatives and responses are at work in the Asia Pacific region, and what these mean for the nature of migration governance in the region. The paper's focus routes the evidence and argument towards current research and policy debates about the relationship between health worker migration, health worker shortages and poor health outcomes. In this, the paper brings new insights into the analysis of the international policy ‘universe’ through its emphasis on multiple and intersecting cross‐border institutions, initiatives and actors operating across different scales. Coherent national and international strategies for integrated health worker migration governance and policy need to incorporate these insights, and the paper considers their implications for current strategies to attain universal health care and improved health outcomes in Asia Pacific and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While internal migration in contemporary China ascribes a great change to urban China's demographic composition, social structures and economic development trajectories, it is yet to restructure the formal definitions of urban identity and belonging, which are still dominated by the household registration system (hukou). The paper suggests that as a result of changes in the political, economic, demographic and social contexts within which China's internal migration develops, there emerge a crucial need to re‐examine the crude forms of determining identity and belonging, questioning the addressing of spatiality within the existing mechanisms (such as hukou system or the shiminhua discourse). To do so, the paper argues that the existing de‐territorialisation of the migration experience has to be replaced with a more nuanced understanding of how spatial practices and conceptualisations shape migrants' experiences, as it is becoming imperative to develop a new framework that is more sensitive to migrants' lived process of identification and belonging, especially as these traverse multiple geographies and spatial scales. This close engagement with migrants' spatiality can then be used as a base from which to engage with a more complex view of migrants' spatial and social relatedness, as well as the development of their urban belonging and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper conceptualises the process of voluntary relocation undertaken by rural farmers to informal settlements in coastal cities. These are journeys that occur without formal institutional support, utilising migrants' own agency. Learning from these community‐driven relocations has merit in rethinking climate change adaptation at the regional level. In this paper we present stories of 17 families who have progressively relocated to the fringes of Khulna city in southwestern Bangladesh. We observe three key attributes: first, relocations are slow, neither singular nor immediately completed, but rather take months of careful back and forth journeys of family members between their places of origin and destination. Second, relocations rely on small networks of relatives and acquaintances at the destination. Third, relocations are built on shared responsibilities distributed among a range of actors in places of origin and destination. We conclude that these slow, small and shared relocations are likely to be realised as forms of ongoing adaptation by rural farmers if their aspirational mobilities, social relations and supports are maintained at a regional scale. This kind of migration as adaptation may bring about just outcomes for those displaced without necessarily promoting rigid planning interventions that tend to fix resettlement solutions in place and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bangladesh experiences some of the most severe impacts of climate change, with impacts already evident in the coastal regions. Recent data shows that around 32% of the coastal communities in Bangladesh are affected by climate‐induced hazards each year. In 2011, 64% among them were displaced locally and 27% were displaced to other locations in Bangladesh. It requires comprehensive and viable polices and planning to meet the challenges of managing a large number of displaced people. In this context, this paper reviews and investigates the effectiveness of current governance frameworks to address migration of affected communities. It argues that migration can be an effective way to cope with environmental shocks. Finally, it discusses policy imperatives for effective protection of people displaced by climate risks with a special reference to adopting a human rights‐based approach in law and policy making for climate‐induced migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the impact the phenomenal growth (2002-2009) and rapid decline (2010-2012) of Indian student numbers has had on the city of Melbourne. Specifically addressing the way the debate developed over the allegedly racially motivated attacks on students in 2009 the paper examines how conflicting narratives on Indian students could emerge presenting them as 'victims' and/or 'profiteers'. Making use of an analysis of over a thousand media reports as well as drawing on ethnographic material the paper argues that the way the debate about the racist character of the attacks unfolded in popular media is revealing of the way the growth in Indian students in Melbourne has been experienced and perceived over time. In particular the entanglement of education and migration in Australia, allowing Indian students to become permanent residents by graduating from low-quality institutions, contributed to the perception of them being low-skilled migrants and as such 'profiteers'. As a result the paper not only shows how a rapidly growing and highly commercial education industry was able to influence the dynamics and socio-cultural make-up of the city of Melbourne but also how the entanglement of education and migration produced a volatile situation with ultimately far reaching social and economic consequences for the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that climate change may cause the loss of atoll countries is now taken for granted in much of climate change science, policy and media coverage. This normalisation of loss means atoll countries now face a future that is apparently finite, which is a grievous situation no other country has to contend with. This paper explains the dilemmas this presents to atoll countries. If there is a risk of forced migration, then strategic planning can minimise its social impacts. Yet, doing so may bring future dangers into the present by undermining efforts to facilitate adaptation to climate change, creating new identities and deterring investments in sustainable resource management. To overcome this dilemma, the paper argues for a more hopeful approach to the future of atoll countries, because for as long as the science of loss remains uncertain, and the limits to adaptation are unknown, forced migration cannot be taken as a matter of fact and could possibly be averted through emission reductions and a vastly improved and significantly more creative approach to adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The papers collected in this volume were originally presented at a conference in February 2004, on the theme ‘Beyond MIRAB: The Political Economy of Small Islands in the Twenty-First Century’. Several of the papers in the collection point towards the emergence of a new three-way taxonomy of small-island socioeconomic formations, comprising MIRAB, PROFIT and SITE ideal-types. The key economic flows in the first are remittances and aid; in the second, jurisdictionally-related flows such as tax-haven and money-laundering transactions; and in the third, tourism revenues. All three ideal-types correspond to potentially sustainable temporary equilibria, but in all cases the existing set-up is path-dependent, and subject to regime switch if disturbed. Conceptualisation of the small-island world as a field of multiple equilibria and path dependence points to the future importance of event studies by island researchers. The collection includes also new research on the theory of remittances, and case studies of the MIRAB process and the transnational migrant diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration has changed the face of Vietnam's highlands in the second half of the 20th century. Areas of forest and swidden agriculture, inhabited by ethnic minorities, have lost their tree cover and, especially in the Central Highlands, are planted with coffee and other commodity agriculture. Their populations now have a high proportion of lowland Vietnamese in-migrants. This paper argues that this transformation is the product of two sets of strategies. One is a state strategy, set in place in the North in 1954 and extended to the South after reunification, to ‘tame’ the region, in terms both of economy and security. The other consists of the strategies of ordinary people in the plains of the North, who migrated with or without reference to the state, hoping to get rich in a region recently described in the lowlands as a ‘promised land’. State organised migration programmes, the Doi Moi process of economic reform, and the decisions and struggles of these families and individuals thus combined to bring about the transformation of the highlands. As the paper shows, however, this combination, has not been without its difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on research in a border village in Northeast Thailand and two villages in Laos, this paper discusses how formal regulations on cross-border migration are negotiated, such that the practice becomes socially acceptable amongst receiving communities. This paper focuses on the border-crossing experiences of Lao migrants to argue that regulations governing the Thai-Lao borders have been circumvented in response to labour demands in the Thai borderlands and mutual interest between local state officials and borderlanders. It is illegal for undocumented migrants to cross the Mekong to work in the farms along the Northeast Thai-Lao borderlands, but the practice has become socially acceptable. This licit status helps Lao migrants to navigate local state authorities, who are also involved in local social relations.The importance of local social relations is emphasised by differences in cross border-migration between jobs in agriculture and jobs in service industries. In urban settings, migrants do not participate in local social relations to the same extent. Consequently, they are viewed as illicit, as well as illegal. While acknowledging the ongoing legal constraints on migrants and their movements, this paper seeks to provide an understanding of how state authority in the border regions is mediated by enduring social relations that create a legitimate space for informal and mutually beneficial actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indonesia is one of Asia's major sources of international contract labour. However little is known about the patterns, causes and consequences of this movement. The present paper sheds some light on one of the major flows of undocumented migration out of Indonesia, from the island of Lombok to Malaysia. The paper examines the process of movement and the causes underlying it. Attention is paid to the role of social networks in that movement, as well as some of the effects of the movement on the migrants themselves, their families and villages of origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the broad range of informal land transactions and arrangements migrants are entering into with customary landowners to gain access to customary land for export cash cropping in the oil palm belt of West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Whilst these arrangements can provide migrants with relatively secure access to land, there are instances of migrants losing their land rights. Typically, the land tenure arrangements of migrants with more secure access to land are within a framework of property rights for social inclusion whereby customary landowners’ inalienable rights to land are preserved and the ‘outsider’ becomes an ‘insider’ with ongoing use rights to the land. Through socially embedding land transactions in place-based practices of non-market exchange, identities of difference are eroded as migrants assume identities as part of their host groups. This adaptability of customary land tenure and its capacity to accommodate large migration in-flows and expanding commodity production undermines the argument common amongst proponents of land reform that customary tenure is static and inflexible. Before such claims are heeded, there must be more detailed empirical investigations of the diverse range of land tenure regimes operating in areas of the country experiencing high rates of immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that an important requirement of the MIRAB model, economic success in the host country, is a characteristic of Pacific Islander migrants to the USA and their offspring. Pacific Islanders improved their economic lot in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. Part of this improvement was due to increases in their human capital: Pacific Islanders acquired more education, work experience and better English language skills. This upgrading allowed more workers to acquire white-collar jobs and to increase their earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1960s, Harold Brookfield and Doreen Hart were ‘startled’ by the order of magnitude differences in incomes from village cash cropping in different parts of Papua New Guinea (PNG). This paper traces these differences, back into a pre-colonial past and forward to the present and concludes, as Brookfield did in the 1960s, that severe environmental constraints, rather than market forces, are the primary cause of the pattern of spatial inequalities observable in PNG. Brookfield noted the existence of an ‘acute dilemma’ in 1960s development funding: should funds be invested where the returns will be highest, or where the need is greatest. This dilemma is as acute today as it was then. However, in the meantime, people from poor places are moving to better-off places, seeking access to markets for their produce and health and education services for their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internal conflicts at the local and national levels in several South Pacific countries have revealed the fragility of national unity and the difficulties nations face in governing and managing their own economic development. In Papua New Guinea, the focus of this paper, an uncertain economic future for many rural and urban communities, and rising inequalities in income opportunities and access to resources, have coincided with greater intolerance of migrants at sites of high in-migration by customary landowners and provincial and local authorities. This paper draws on fieldwork undertaken in the major oil palm growing regions of Papua New Guinea where migrants from densely populated regions of the country have settled on state land alienated from customary landowners. We examine how struggles over land, resource control and development are polarising migrant and landowner identities resulting in increasing tensions and episodic communal violence. A settler identity is emerging based on a narrative of nation building and national development, while an ethno-regional identity amongst customary landowners is undermining the citizen rights of migrants and challenging the role and authority of the state in land matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to situate the study of international labour migration, and especially the policies of labour export, within a gendered geopolitical framework. In so doing I open avenues of inquiry into the complexities of political ideologies that guide state apparatuses. Specifically, I examine how the Philippine state negotiates and operates within contradictory capitalist spaces through discourses of scale. Spatial scales are politically and socially constructed to legitimise power relations and to justify particular policies and programmes. In its support of capital accumulation, the Philippine state tends to adopt a discourse of globalisation; when confronted with charges of migrant exploitation, the Philippine state couples a discourse of the global with a discourse of the body. This corporeal discourse attempts to deflect attention and criticism away from the state, thereby maintaining its political hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies the role of population mobility in the transformation of the Mae Sa village community in Mae Rim District of Chiang Mai Province, northern Thailand. Data for the analysis derive from an in-depth investigation in 1976–1977 and successive studies over the following 22 years including a substantial reinvestigation in 1995–1996. In these two decades, the village has been transformed from a traditional agricultural community to a ‘modern’ rural community with considerable employment outside the village and other links to the outside world. The paper discusses the complexity of the in- and out- migration process and the significance of the roles played by permanent and non-permanent migration in the transformation of the village resource base and social institutions. Special attention is given to social relations at the individual, family and community levels with implications on the definition of movement for the people of Mae Sa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration is increasingly being promoted as a possible adaptive response to risks associated with climate change and other stresses. While migration may present an adaptation pathway in certain contexts, existing research fails to consider the ways in which migration could contribute to vulnerability in sending communities. This paper examines the impact of migration-affected change on local vulnerability in Lamen Bay, Vanuatu. Qualitative methods, including interviews and focus groups with 58 individuals, were used to determine how migration interacts with the multiple stressors faced by the community. The results show that migration is likely to contribute to vulnerability in already vulnerable communities. In Lamen Bay, migration affects a number of contextual factors that influence exposure and the capacity to respond to change, including labour supply, food security, migrant attitudes, underdevelopment and institutional viability. These results suggest that development policy in Vanuatu needs to address existing vulnerabilities while offering the opportunity to migrate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a recent research project into rural-urban labour migrants in Shanghai, China, who are members of ethnic minorities, inquiring into the role of ethnicity in national labour migration. It introduces some of the main features of the ethnic nationalities ( minzu) in China and considers some of the literature on rural-urban migration in China which may be considered as relevant to ethnicity. The case of a Miao minority family in Shanghai is described in detail to argue that what remains important to them in the city is not their formal ethnic affiliation ( minzu) so much as a sub-ethnic identity of connectedness and intimacy, importantly related to kinship and place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most previous empirical studies of migration and remittances ignored possible differences among occupational categories of migrants. Where human capital investment decisions and occupational choices are influenced by perceived prospects for international migration, internationally tradable occupations such as nursing are likely to attract individuals with particular attributes and with a stronger propensity to migrate. We argue that this can also affect the remittance behaviour of such occupational groups, pointing to the need for a disaggregated analysis by occupational category. This paper reports the results of a recent survey of nurses in Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, and nurse migrants from the same countries in Australia and New Zealand. We also report the findings from a re-analysis of earlier remittance data from Tongan and Samoan migrants in Australia. Nurse household remittance behaviour is statistically different from others, with nurses remitting more generously and consistently over time. The reasons and implications are explored. The impact and volume of nurse remittances emphasise the sustainability of the migration, remittances, aid and bureaucracy (MIRAB) system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines patterns of migration in Jakarta City based on the 1995 Intercensal Survey (SUPAS) Data. It shows the emergence of female in-migration in response to the shift of economic activities in the city from manufacturing industries to services and finance sectors. The study also documents migration from Jakarta, the core of Jabotabek (Jakarta Metropolitan Area) to the fringe areas, which reflects the physical as well as socio-economical restructuring of this Metropolitan Area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on ongoing biographical research of Indonesian migrant workers in the oil palm plantations of Malaysia, this paper explores their different strategies of survival in a sector characterised by an ongoing precarity of livelihoods. The life stories of six workers from Sulawesi, Flores, Java and Sumatra are used to illustrate a tentative typology of migration experiences. As the workers set out from their own specific context of 'surplus population', they are confronted with a migration labour regime that is based on the social and political precarisation of the workers. However, in order to achieve their development aspirations, the workers find different ways of adapting to or circumventing the precarious labour regime. In particular, flight or absconding (lari) is used to change employers, to find better working conditions and to increase wages. Another key strategy is to increase the permanence of their stay, either by choosing illegality or by negotiating retrospective documentation. These strategies lead to the emergence of long-term transnational networks that change the social reality of the migration regime in the oil palm industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tonga's economy is supported by remittances from Tongans overseas, but there are indications that the younger generations are unlikely to maintain this level of support. There appears to be a complacent attitude to remittances both within Tonga and in externally produced economic reports, yet if remittance levels drop significantly, the ramifications will be disastrous for Tonga. This paper looks at Tongan transnationalism in the context of the current situation in Tonga and the wider Pacific, arguing that it will be crucial, yet very difficult, to encourage the ‘second generation’ overseas to be involved in the process of nation building through transnational engagements. The major obstacles to young people's establishment of transnational ties are examined, and the Tongan situation is compared to U.S. research on second generation trans-nationalism in other migrant groups. Finally, the ways in which transnational engagements could be encouraged are explored, particularly the importance of language learning and developing a sense of ‘belonging’ to the ‘homeland’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is one of the key objectives of, and means for, development. Its value is widely accepted though we rarely investigate the way different theories of development inform widely differing justifications and strategies for education. This article explores some of these issues and proposes five main paradigms regarding the education‐development nexus. These we term neoliberalism, retroliberalism, neostructuralism, place‐based and radical. Each is linked to particular concepts of development, each involves certain forms of education, and each is linked to particular policy discourses. Although these are largely abstract paradigms and in practice we see more hybridised forms co‐existing, we consider implications of each paradigm for education with examples from Oceania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores knowledge transfers in international migration and development through insights from Pacific Island seasonal workers participating in Australia's Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP). We discuss actual and potential horticultural knowledge transfers that are enabled when circular migrants are engaged in agriculture in their place of migration origin and destination. Transfers identified by seasonal workers themselves include: technologies to improve horticultural production, exposure to different crop types, and techniques to improve crop yields. We argue that SWP migrants should be reframed as knowledge holders (not 'unskilled' or 'low‐skilled' labourers), and reflect on how knowledge transfers can be better supported to enable benefits for communities of origin and destination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely assumed that the impacts of climate change on atolls will render them uninhabitable. The Carteret Islands, an iconic Pacific atoll, is experiencing physical changes, documented in the media, the outcome of multiple factors, alongside critical economic livelihood problems. Its population has sought to resettle on nearby Bougainville Island, but land has not become available. The search for migration opportunities parallels trends on coral atolls elsewhere where survival strategies have involved regional and international ties, with cultures of migration, focused on more distant international destinations. Carteret Islanders have not been able to mobilise similar relationships. For many atolls and atoll states, migration has increasingly become a livelihood strategy, irrespective of climate change. That is likely to become even more true in the future, but the outcome will be dependent on policies and practices in metropolitan destination states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a challenging contemporary context of isolation and inequality, inhabitants of small Pacific islands have employed a variety of strategies to ensure that their livelihoods are both secure and sustainable. On the outer island of Aniwa, subsistence activities still constitute the basis of island life but are complemented by an increasingly diverse mix of cash-generating livelihood practices. Different motivations and constraints, including access to natural, physical, financial, social and human capital, affect the composition and success of household livelihood portfolios. Despite the significant inequality in household cash incomes on Aniwa, traditional sharing and exchange relationships between households on the island and between island and migrant households ensure sufficient food and shelter for all villagers. Rather than being a one-way drain on the island's skills and income-generation potential, the constant flows of people, money and goods between the home island and migration destinations sustain the outer-island community and its diasporas. Aniwa thus exemplifies how diversification and migration can provide a basis for sustainable and resilient island livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Return migration has escaped significant analysis in the Pacific island region. Both migration from and return migration to the Tongan village of Nukunuku are for multiple reasons, with migration centred on employment and education, and return centred on the social context of home and duty. Return is limited, with intentions not being matched with practice, and the village and national population not growing. However, return migrants acquire skills, capital and experience overseas, which can be transferred into a Tongan cultural context, although identities have changed during migration. Return migrants typically take up employment or acquire businesses on return, gain some social status from the outcome, and are neither failures nor retirees. Nonetheless, return engenders expectations and tensions exist between returnees and more established residents, although ultimately, return migrants contribute to household, local and national development, as part of an unfinished process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnationalism needs to be understood as a set of practices fashioned through the life course as well as in relation to contextual factors that include state policy and experiences of discrimination that affect entry to the labour force. The paradox of transnationalism is that families make strategic decisions to separate in order to maintain family unity and to advance the welfare of children. Emigrants from Hong Kong to Canada in the latter decades of the twentieth century were motivated by concern for family welfare and the quality of education in Canada. Yet economic livelihood prospects remained greater in Hong Kong than in Canada, prompting many families to become transnational ‘astronaut’ families with one or more members working in Hong Kong. Migration decisions tend to occur around key points of life-course transition involving entry to and graduation from education, and entry to and exit from the labour force. Transnational practices are complex and multigenerational, involving different patterns for young adults, those in their middle years and the elderly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The USA provides economic assistance to the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands under the Compacts of Free Association. Both economies demonstrate three of the four MIRAB components: migration, aid and bureaucracy. Only the remittance structure has not developed. Significant US assistance supported large government sectors in both nations. Reductions in US assistance of over a 17-year period led many island citizens to migrate to the USA. However, to date, remittances have not been substantial. In addition to structural challenges, both nations face institutional constraints including poor governance and lack of accountability over assistance. To improve future growth through more effective use of US assistance, these institutional constraints must be overcome. Future US assistance to both nations will fall over the next 20 years, putting pressure on the island governments and will likely contract their economies. The need for remittance streams is likely to increase. New Compact assistance structures strive to improve aid accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global flows of people and information in the Asia–Pacific region are creating new forms of place that stretch across national boundaries and rural–urban distinctions. These new mobile forms of place link long-inhabited rural areas to cities, national centres, and to rural frontiers within the nation. Here, we describe new forms of place that are being produced by contemporary migration and economic change, using data from the Philippines and applying Appadurai's theorisation of translocality. Our analysis links these flows of overseas migrants to concomitant processes of economic change, migration and new rural livelihoods. We outline changing practices of place within the Philippines, exploring ways that transnational migration can articulate with apparently ‘local’ development and the flow-on effects from migration on the spatial patterns of rural livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Greenhouse-induced sea-level rise (SLR) threatens coral atolls and particularly the few atoll states, such as Tuvalu. This central Pacific island microstate has minimal economic development options, and has increasingly perceived emigration and remittances as a development strategy, despite restricted opportunities. Internal migration, in search of wage employment, has brought almost half the national population to Funafuti atoll, with negative local environmental consequences. Short-term scientific data show no evidence of SLR in Tuvalu, but the Government of Tuvalu has argued that there is visual evidence of SLR, through such consequences as increased erosion, flooding and salinity. Global media have increasingly emphasised a doomsday scenario, with Tuvalu as synecdoche and symbol of all threatened island environments. Environmental problems of diverse origin have been entirely attributed to distant processes causing SLR, in terms of ‘garbage can anarchy’ or a ‘conspiracy narrative’, and thus to distant causes. The Tuvalu Government has consequently sought compensation from, and migration opportunities in, distant states. The construction of apparently imminent hazard has potential domestic political and economic advantages, but environmental costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates local expert perceptions of the role of environmental factors, especially in terms of contemporary climate change, in population movements from Bangladesh to India. The aim is to delve into locally held understandings of the phenomenon and to gain a better understanding of these migration processes, which are actively intertwined with local experiences. Both Indian and Bangladeshi experts were interviewed using semi-structured, in-depth interviews in order to explore insights from locally held perceptions and understandings of contextual factors. In total, 10 Bangladeshi and 15 Indian experts were interviewed, covering different disciplines, sectors, regions and job types, together providing a more complete and grounded picture of views of environmentally induced migration in Bangladesh and India. The results show that climate change is perceived by local experts as one of the key factors influencing migration in Bangladesh, both internally and externally. The interviewees, however, placed environmentally induced migration in a broader context of labour and economic migration. In particular, migration for environmental reasons in Bangladesh was evident long before the emergence of climate change as an issue. According to the interviewed experts, this does not preclude increased environmentally induced migration within and from Bangladesh in the future, but its analyses ought to be placed in historical and economical contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]