Climate-related Migration: Challenges and Locally Led Solutions in Urban Bangladesh

Abstract

This book examines the adaptation experiences of urban migrants in Bangladesh who moved in the context of climate change. It explores the circumstances under which migration functions as an adaptation strategy by reducing risks and vulnerabilities, enhancing wellbeing, and providing climate-resilient pathways. It also examines the situations in which migration becomes maladaptive, creating new vulnerabilities and resulting in precarious work and living conditions. Drawing on extensive field research conducted in Jashore, Satkhira, Chattogram, and Cox’s Bazar, the study begins by investigating the complex and interconnected drivers of migration. It then explores the economic, social, environmental, and political dimensions of the wellbeing and precarity experienced by urban migrants who have relocated on their own relatively recently. The book critically examines how the lack of integration among sectoral policies, along with the absence of targeted resource allocation and designated spaces for urban service providers, contributes to increased precarity and reduced wellbeing. From a macro-level perspective, it seeks to draw a correlation between a centralised system of governance and megacity-centric migration patterns, which hinder the development of meaningful locally led solutions.