Worldwide, climate hazards increasingly pose existential threats to subsistence farmers (Cohn et al. 2017; Niles & Salerno 2018). Worsening hazards include both abrupt events, such as floods, and gradual processes, such as glacier retreat (Pörtner et al. 2022). Many subsistence farmers struggle to manage such hazards where they live because they are multidimensionally poor (Donatti et al. 2019; Sietz et al. 2012). As a result, climate impacts are increasingly influencing their migration decisions (Cissé et al. 2022; FAO et al. 2018). For example, when water gradually becomes scarcer and threatens harvests, smallholders may send a household member to the city to find work (Wrathall et al. 2018). As another example, abrupt floods that destroy farmers’ fragile shelters may lead to displacement (Ginnetti et al. 2019), sometimes of entire communities that require state-supported planned relocation (Bower & Weerasinghe 2021). Such climate migration has become a reality in numerous areas worldwide and is projected to increase further as climate impacts intensify (Clement et al. 2021; Rigaud et al. 2018). Simultaneously, many affected people are either unable to leave risk areas or do not wish to do so (immobility) (Benveniste et al. 2022; Choquette-Levy et al. 2021).

Both migrating from and remaining in areas facing climate hazards can have sweeping and enduring impacts on the well-being of affected people. While a new home can provide benefits such as safety from climate hazards, better access to education, and new sources of income, migrants often also face severe risks (Adger et al. 2014; Cissé et al. 2022). Such risks include precarious work, unsafe housing, discrimination, loss of social ties and traditions, increased hazard exposure, dissatisfaction with life, emotional stress, and loss of hope for the future (e.g. Melde et al. 2017). Similarly, some people who remain in risk zones may have the capacity to adapt locally to climate impacts and thus preserve their well-being within their home communities, whereas others with limited resources may become trapped and experience recurrent loss and damage that threatens their well-being (Ayeb-Karlsson et al. 2018; Mallick & Schanze 2020). Nevertheless, the implications of climate migration and immobility (or climate (im)mobilities) for people’s well-being remain poorly understood. Few studies provide comprehensive analyses of how moving or staying influences multiple facets of objective need fulfillment. Even less research examines how affected people self-evaluate their lives, how they feel, and how they look to the future in these situations.

In this interdisciplinary, mixed methods dissertation, I aim to address these gaps by dissecting multidimensional well-being impacts related to varied climate (im)mobilities within Peru. The study examines all four types of climate (im)mobilities identified by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC 2010) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2022a), namely migration, displacement, relocation, and immobility. Peru provides a fitting case to examine such dynamics. The tropical country can be considered a microcosm of the global challenges caused by climate change because it is home to examples of most of the Earth’s climate zones, vastly varying landscapes, and megadiverse ecosystems (MINAM 2015). Moreover, Peru’s large rural population remains poor and reliant on livelihoods that are susceptible to climate impacts (USAID 2017; World Bank 2021c). Many farmers live in areas that are highly exposed to hazards, which climate change is intensifying (SINAGERD et al. 2014). As a result, abrupt and gradual water-related hazards, such as floods and glacier retreat, have increasingly influenced farmers’ migration decisions. In addition, Peru’s deeply rooted systems of internal migration suggest that moving will remain an important response strategy in a future affected by climate change (see review in Bergmann et al. 2021a). Simultaneously, large numbers of people remain in areas affected by hazards, at least at the onset of hazards (Adams 2016; Koubi et al. 2016; SINAGERD et al. 2014).

To investigate the well-being impacts of climate migration and immobility within Peru, I applied a mixed methods design. Detailed interview data from 81 affected people across Peru’s three large natural zones—its coastal desert, highlands, and rainforests—and one focus group with 12 participants shed light on the complexity of these effects and their underlying mechanisms of action. To gather contextual information, I also held discussions with more than 60 experts. In addition, I examined the well-being impacts of displacement in the coastal case study from a complementary angle by using survey data from close to 190,000 respondents.

By assessing multidimensional well-being effects and their mechanisms of action, the dissertation pursues two main goals. First, it aims to inform debates about the potential of migration as an adaptation strategy and about loss and damage due to climate change. Second, it strives to provide evidence that can support development and adaptation planning to safeguard the well-being of the growing number of climate migrants and people in immobility.

1 Context and Scope of the Research

Climate change is rapidly altering the planet Earth (Hallegatte et al. 2016; Pörtner et al. 2022). Greenhousse gas emissions, mainly from the use of fossil fuels and land-use changes, have already caused global warming of approximately 1.1 °C above pre-industrial levels and continue to raise global temperatures by nearly 0.2 °C per decade (IPCC 2018b, 2021). This warming and other emissions-driven changes in the climate system are multiplying climate-change-related hazards worldwide. Observed variability and average trends, such as rainfall per year, have begun to shift. Simultaneously, weather extremes, such as heavy rainfall events and heat waves, are intensifying and becoming more frequent. These changes have already started to have concerning effects. Examples abound: glaciers and ice sheets have retreated globally, the oceans have warmed and acidified, and sea levels have risen by 0.2 m since the early 20th century; extreme events, such as droughts and ten-year heatwaves, likely occur two to three times more often now than they did in the base period of 1850–1900 (IPCC 2021); land degradation and desertification have intensified (IPCC 2019b); and extensive coral reef losses have been observed in various oceans (IPCC 2019a).

In the approaching decades, all elements of life on Earth will be confronted with increasing climate risks (IPCC 2021). Examples of risks for physical systems include additional coastal erosion and further changes in the cryosphere. Risks for biological systems comprise further losses of coral reefs and mass species extinction, while crop losses and human ill-health are examples of risks for human systems (Díaz et al. 2019; IPCC 2014). These climate risks often interact with non-climatic stressors such as pollution, soil degradation, and overexploitation of resources. As the term “risk” implies, the potential future magnitude of these effects is concerning but not entirely predetermined. While the emissions accumulated since the Industrial Revolution have made several impacts unavoidable (Huntingford et al. 2020; Zhou et al. 2021), the magnitude of future climate risks depends partially on the socioeconomic and emissions pathways that are pursued in the upcoming decades (IPCC 2021). On the one hand, societal factors such as demographic change, development, and governance influence the extent of human and natural systems’ exposure and vulnerability to hazards. For example, societal factors will determine the future growth of settlements in threatened areas and the changes in people’s resources and abilities to deal with hazards. Simultaneously, the ways in which societies live, produce, and consume will drive greenhouse gas emissions. Despite the committed warming due to accumulated past emissions, a profound and rapid mitigation of emissions could still lower risks substantially (IPCC 2021, 2022b; Masson-Delmotte et al. 2018). Transformative mitigation action might reduce future warming to a more manageable magnitude of well below 2 °C—or ideally below 1.5 °C—by 2100, a goal to which 192 parties committed in the Paris Agreement (UNFCCC 2015). Far from guaranteeing a safe future, warming of this extent would still entail moderate to high risks, for example due to more frequent and severe hot temperature extremes, extreme precipitation events, and droughts in drying regions (IPCC 2014, 2021). However, current real-world action suggests a path that is likely to result in global mean temperatures 2.7 °C above those of pre-industrial times by 2100 (Climate Action Tracker 2021; WMO 2021), and the window for action is closing rapidly. If warming of this extent or even greater were to occur, related impacts such as extreme heat stress would become nearly impossible to manage in several world regions (Andrews et al. 2018; Mora et al. 2017a). Additionally, greater warming would increase the risk of exceeding various tipping points in the Earth system, such as the collapse of large ice sheets or the dieback of tropical rainforests, which would lead to abrupt, severe, and partially irreversible feedback effects worldwide (Lenton et al. 2008; Lenton et al. 2019).

Although projections of the extent of climate risks for human development vary, the risks are severe in all scenarios (Pörtner et al. 2022). Climate change is the largest threat to the goals of human development, namely, to expand human well-being and people’s freedom to live their lives as they choose (Alkire 2016; Gough 2015; Sen 1999). Climate impacts compromise human security, peace, and states’ ability to govern (Adger et al. 2014). They also undermine the livelihoods of people who already suffer from multidimensional poverty and inequality, exacerbate non-climatic stressors, and can create poverty traps (Birkmann et al. 2022; Cohn et al. 2017). Most at risk are people with preexisting susceptibilities, such as those with high dependency on ecosystem services, livelihoods that are not easily diversified, and poor shelter. Equally at risk are persons who face intersecting discrimination related to factors such as age, ethnicity or “race”,Footnote 1 gender, and physical ability. Impacts can also create new vulnerabilities, push more people into poverty, and increase inequality (Birkmann et al. 2022). As one example, without major development efforts, climate impacts could drive around 100 million additional people into extreme poverty by 2030 (Hallegatte et al. 2016). As another case in point, climate change and infectious diseases are linked in multiple ways, which can increase the risk of pandemics such as that of COVID-19 (Caminade et al. 2019; Wu et al. 2016).

Globally, people are struggling to confront these worsening climate impacts. While some attempt to deal with the impacts where they live, others migrate to prepare for future hazards or to cope with damage already experienced (Castells-Quintana et al. 2018). Examples of local coping or adaptation strategies include changes in crop, farming, land, and water management, as well as financial practices (Challinor et al. 2014; Owen 2020). At once, climate hazards, together with other factors such as a shortage of jobs or educational opportunities, are increasingly shaping people’s decisions about whether to leave affected areas. Although migration is multicausal, and climate impacts intersect with economic, political, social, and demographic drivers, meta-analyses corroborate that climate signals are relevant in migration decisions (Beine & Jeusette 2021; Hoffmann et al. 2020; Hoffmann et al. 2021). Climate-induced harm influences whether people aspire to move, the resources they have available to implement this choice, and the larger societal structures such as government policies that facilitate or hinder their decisions. With worsening hazards, the future scale of climate migration could be substantial. Conservative estimates of recent models indicate that in a scenario with high emissions and unequal development, close to 3% of the total population in six developing regionsFootnote 2 may become internal climate migrants by 2050 (Clement et al. 2021; Rigaud et al. 2018). Simultaneously, meta-analyses demonstrate that such increasing climate impacts can reduce resources and decrease migration for other groups (Hoffmann et al. 2020; Šedová et al. 2021). Given these possibly large numbers of affected people, it is imperative for policy and planning to understand the impacts of climate migration or immobility on affected people’s lives and well-being.

Although investigations of the impacts of climate-induced (im)mobilities are few, general migration studies underscore that moving can have large effects on multiple dimensions of life (Lagakos 2020; Lucas 2021a; Selod & Shilpi 2021), as the following examples illustrate for a number of key dimensions. Many internal migrants profit from moving in terms of the human development indicators of income, education, and health (UNDP 2020). However, these indicators are not improved for all migrants, and benefits can be accompanied by challenges in terms of exclusion, discrimination, insecurity, and a lack of access to basic services or decent work (Melde et al. 2017; UNESCO 2020). Depending on the context, settling in a new place can result in mental illness or improved mental health (Foo et al. 2018; Mak et al. 2021; Stillman et al. 2015). Additionally, distance from close contacts and social support systems can cause psychological distress after migration (Hynie 2018; Selod & Shilpi 2021; World Bank 2017b). The review of evidence in the latest IPCC report emphasizes that displacement and involuntary migration in particular have “generated and perpetuated vulnerability” (2022a: 12). On the other side of the equation, people who remain in their areas of origin may profit from remittances such as technology or money (Mohapatra et al. 2012; Obi et al. 2020), but these benefits can be distributed unevenly and thus increase inequality (Azizi 2021; Le Dé et al. 2013). In some cases, emigration can strain social relations, erode traditions, and deprive sending communities of a labor force, thereby contributing to food insecurity (Lucas 2021c; Obi et al. 2020; Sherman et al. 2015). While less evidence is available regarding the well-being impacts of immobility, persons involuntarily trapped in adverse situations may suffer from impoverishment, food insecurity, health issues, and hostility and violence (Brubaker et al. 2011; Herren 1991; Mallick & Schanze 2020; Schwerdtle et al. 2017; Sow et al. 2016). Altogether, these examples illustrate that (im)mobilities can affect most dimensions of people’s lives deeply and enduringly. Nonetheless, a major research gap remains regarding the impacts of climate migration and immobility (Clement et al. 2021; Hoffmann et al. under review).

Since climate (im)mobilities influence such a wide range of factors, it is important to choose an adequate lens through which to frame and assess their impacts. The decision of what to include and exclude when measuring impacts is not trivial and has tangible implications because only what is defined can be measured and assessed and thus inform policy and planning. To begin with, the idea of immobility has gained traction since the publication of the seminal Foresight (2011) research report and has generated at least three narratives (Ayeb-Karlsson et al. 2018). Despite their differences, these three narratives all imply that studies should focus on measuring the economic, social, and political risks related to immobility. The dominant narrative warns of extreme impoverishment risks related to forced immobility (Adger et al. 2015; Black et al. 2011a; Black et al. 2013). A second discourse expands this narrative by highlighting the dangers arising from entrapment that extend beyond economic damage, such as discrimination, racism, and violence (Black & Collyer 2014; Geddes et al. 2012; Geddes 2015; Sow et al. 2016). Finally, a few authors have raised the criticism that actors who promote migration as a solution to “entrapment” are concealing an agenda of racial management, exploitation, and the maximization of capital circulation through mobility (Baldwin 2016; Felli & Castree 2012). By contrast, other authors have recently highlighted that certain groups decide to remain immobile (Farbotko et al. 2020; Farbotko & McMichael 2019; Mallick et al. 2020; Mallick & Schanze 2020). Consequently, these scholars focus more on assessing people’s agency, resistance, adaptation and livelihood options, social equality, and human rights.

Next, studies on climate migration also apply various frames and metrics.Footnote 3 Initially, scholars tended to frame the implications of such migration through a prism of human rights protection or security (“environmental refugees”) (Piguet 2013), often using the topic as a “shorthand for climate security concerns in general” (Baldwin et al. 2014: 125). For assessing the impacts of migration, this viewpoint implies a focus on possible violations of the human rights of affected people or on conflict in destinations. Partially in response to the security lens, other scholars re-framed the issue from a human security perspective (Dalby 2002, 2012; Methmann & Oels 2015). In this view, affected people’s vulnerabilities are the central criterion for assessing impacts. Moreover, since the 2000 s, there has been a major shift in the research, which has gone from highlighting the forced nature of climate migration to emphasizing it as a possible adaptation to climate change (Black et al. 2011a; McLeman 2016a; McLeman & Smit 2006; Webber & Barnett 2010). Climate adaptation refers to attenuating or circumventing the harm caused by climate impacts, for example by protecting exposed assets, reducing and diversifying risk, or changing location (Adger et al. 2014; Adger et al. 2018). The new migration-as-adaptation framing is based on the New Economics of Labor Migration (NELM) theory, which sees migration as a group risk management strategy that seeks to diversify income sources (Stark 1978; Stark & Bloom 1985; Stark & Taylor 1989). Additionally, the framing is informed by empirical migration studies, in particular those conducted in drought areas (Gray & Mueller 2012; Henry et al. 2003; McLeman & Hunter 2010; McLeman & Smit 2006). This re-framing of migration as a possible means of adaptation has become a central perspective in the literature. It has been adopted by major actors such as the IPCC (Adger et al. 2014) and is embodied in policy processes such as the Cancún Adaptation Framework (UNFCCC 2010), the Global Compact for Migration (UNGA 2018), and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (Guadagno 2016; UNISDR 2015).

This new framing of migration as adaptation has proved a powerful antidote to prior discourses that securitized or victimized migrants, yet its adequacy continues to be debated. While this shift in framing has directed crucial research and policy attention to the potential positives of migration, various scholars cast doubt on the extent of the agency of migrants who must confront severe hazards, and criticize the lack of attention paid to structural inequalities that shape people’s attempts to move for adaptation (Sakdapolrak et al. 2016; Schade et al. 2016; Vinke et al. 2020). Others criticize the migration-as-adaptation lens as a neoliberal shift of responsibility for climate adaptation from emitting states and home governments to individuals, which conceals climate injustice dimensions, the moral need and urgency of protection, as well as the losses preceding and following migration (Bettini et al. 2017; Bettini & Gioli 2016; Gemenne 2015). Similarly, I argue in this dissertation that although understanding the adaptive potential of climate migration is key, this perspective has blind spots and risks ignoring the full extent of migration’s meaning for people’s lives. A large empirical study has demonstrated that although migration may hold some adaptation potential for certain households, it can also erode the adaptive capacities of households with preexisting vulnerabilities (Warner & Afifi 2014). The IPCC also acknowledges that climate change will “have significant impacts on forms of migration that compromise human security” (Adger et al. 2014: 758) as it may “perpetuate or amplify [poorer] migrants’ socio-economic precarity” (Cissé et al. 2022: 56), for example if the migrants are exposed to new climate hazards at their destination. Displacement and planned relocation are forms of coping with negative to mixed results at best (Melde et al. 2017). Thus, while member states of the UNFCCC recognized migration as a possible form of adaptation in the Cancún Adaptation Framework and committed to improve related “understanding, coordination, and cooperation” (UNFCCC 2010: para. 14(f))—constituting a landmark catalyst for policy attention (Nash 2018; Warner 2012)—they also considered mobility under the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for Loss and Damage with the aim to “avert, minimize and address displacement” (Task Force on Displacement 2018: 1). In contrast to adaptation, the Loss and Damage prism centers on negative climate impacts that overwhelm people’s adaptive capacity and thus emphasizes the severe or irreversible harms that climate change can produce (James et al. 2014; Tschakert et al. 2019). For example, when adaptation limits are transgressed, losses of housing, livelihoods, cultural practices, and biodiversity can induce migration or harm those who remain. Accordingly, the Loss and Damage lens implies a focus on protection, compensation, and remedies for assessing the impacts of climate (im)mobilities. It emphasizes that “migration is not socially neutral or simple” even when it facilitates successful adaptation to climate impacts (Adger et al. 2018: 40). On the contrary, migration can create far-reaching social costs and risks, including disruption of social cohesion, loss of life satisfaction, emotional stress, and despair regarding the future. The migration-as-adaptation lens, which is often focused on select economic measures of success based on NELM assumptions, tends to overlook such types of impacts. Moreover, adaptation aims only to preserve a status quo or return to zero by avoiding or attenuating climate impacts. In this sense, migrating would be desirable if it allowed people to reduce and adjust to harm. However, the goal, from a development perspective, should go beyond allowing migrants to balance out climate impacts so that they can return to a previous and possibly precarious state. Rather, concerned actors should ensure that migrants can flourish and be well. Martin Seligman, the founder of Positive Psychology, advanced a similar argument when discussing his discipline: “[It was not] enough for us to nullify disabling conditions and get to zero. We needed to ask, what are the enabling conditions that make human beings flourish? How do we get from zero to plus five?” (cited in Wallis 2005: para. 2). Assessing climate migration or immobility through an adaptation prism stops short at the essential point of the assessment: how these phenomena influence people’s multidimensional well-being. The timeliness of this focus on well-being is highlighted by the fact that the latest IPCC report for the first time includes an entire chapter on well-being, which also discusses health, migration, and conflict (Cissé et al. 2022).

Examining the impacts of climate migration and immobility requires comprehensive and locally grounded measures of well-being. The few existing studies overemphasize indicators chosen by outside experts that are thought to represent the adaptive potential of migration (e.g. Melde et al. 2017). Migration can strongly influence such objective measures of well-being (OWB) that gauge means and conditions to meet human needs, such as income, health, and education (UNDP 2020). These measures are essential to appraise the conditions that presumably enable migrants and stayers to “be well”. Although they provide important information, there are empirical and conceptual limitations to the use of such objective measures alone to infer the overall impacts of (im)mobilities and design adequate policy responses. First, well-being needs and goals depend on weightings given by people themselves, which vary across time and contexts (OECD 2013). Universalistic approaches that assume the same patterns of needs in all human beings disregard sociocultural differences across countries and regions. Well-being research must therefore be grounded in local contexts (Yamamoto et al. 2008; Yamamoto & Feijoo 2007). The decision about which needs are central to people and thus measured should be informed by research conducted with the respective populations. Second, conditions judged as decent from the outside do not automatically translate into positive lives in people’s own evaluations. Consequently, assessing changes in migrants’ or stayers’ objective conditions is necessary but not sufficient to gain a comprehensive understanding (Forgeard et al. 2011; Tay et al. 2015). As Campbell wrote, “ultimately, the quality of life must be in the eye of the beholder, and it is there that we seek to evaluate it” (1972: 422). Well-being relates not only to how needs are met but also to how people evaluate need fulfillment in the present (Costanza et al. 2007) and how they look to the future (Gulyas 2015). Migration can have significant effects on these measures of subjective well-being (SWB) (Haindorfer 2019b; Helliwell et al. 2018b). For example, migration may help people to reduce the harm they face from climate impacts, but it makes a great difference to their well-being how satisfied they remain with their lives after migrating, if they experience more negative or positive emotions, and if they look to the future with fear or hope. Since SWB measures directly assess people’s lived experiences and the significance they attach to them, they provide a more complete picture of what migration or staying means for people. SWB is also a means to an end in itself because it contributes to health, longevity, social relationships, workplace success, and other domains (Carver et al. 2010; Diener et al. 2017a). SWB perspectives are thus relevant for policy and planning in many fields (Diener & Tay 2016; OECD 2013) and are a valuable lens for studying climate (im)mobilities. Because measures of OWB and SWB both have distinct advantages and limitations, a combined application of these measures offers a more detailed and “full picture of human flourishing” than either one alone (Costanza et al. 2007; Forgeard et al. 2011: 98; OECD 2013). To summarize, this dissertation aims to assess the multidimensional well-being impacts related to climate migration and immobility in Peru. To this end, I analyze how migrants and stayers can fulfil the human needs they prioritize and investigate how they evaluate their own lives, feel about the present, and see their futures.

2 Research Questions and Objectives

The main research question in this dissertation—in what ways and why does migrating from, or staying in, areas harmed by climate hazards affect people’s well-being?—comprises several sub-questions and research objectives. First, I am interested in empirical effects: what well-being impacts do affected people experience? Given that well-being is a multidimensional concept (OECD 2013), how do various components of objective well-being, such as income, health, and education, relate to one another? Do changes in objective and subjective indicators such as emotional balance contrast or complement each other? In addition, I investigate effects across localities: in what ways does migration affect not only the persons who leave but also those who remain in their communities of origin (Gemenne & Blocher 2017)? Finally, because well-being is not a state but a process (Copestake 2008b; Laczko & Appave 2013), another research interest is the evolution of effects: how do people’s situations and their assessments thereof change over time?Footnote 4

My second interest is in the underlying mechanisms of action. What determines, moderates, and mediates the well-being of migrants and stayers? Why do the well-being effects evolve? I aim to examine the social conditions under which migrating or staying have positive, neutral, or negative well-being impacts. How do structural constraints and opportunities, together with the conditions and resources required to migrate or stay, influence well-being impacts (Bartram 2015)? For example, which configurations of social structures affect an individual’s likelihood of faring better or worse in different well-being dimensions after moving or staying? Why do people with similar starting conditions sometimes fare differently? Which factors at the individual, community, and societal levels influence these impacts?

This investigation of the well-being impacts related to climate (im)mobilities and their mechanisms of action stands to make several contributions to research, policy, planning, and public debate. First, the study can make an original contribution to the limited empirical research on what migrating from or remaining in areas facing climate hazards means for affected people. As worsening climate impacts will increase migration in many contexts but also constrain movement in others (Clement et al. 2021; Rigaud et al. 2018), it is key to examine how (im)mobilities affect the multilayered dimensions of people’s well-being. However, studies that adopt a well-being lens are still rare, especially for hazard-driven instances of (im)mobilities. By using mixed methods—an approach that is still rare in this field (Boas et al. 2020)—this study also contributes to methodological development in this subject area. Second, the analysis may yield important information for policymakers and practitioners who are interested in safeguarding or improving affected people’s well-being. The cases that are analyzed respond to calls in major international frameworks (UNFCCC 2010) to further the knowledge about migration, displacement, and relocation. The cases also include voluntary and involuntary immobility, which are two under-researched areas of concern (Cissé et al. 2022). Evidence regarding how such climate (im)mobilities contribute to multidimensional changes in people’s objective and subjective conditions is vital to inform climate adaptation action, development strategies, and remedies or compensation for Loss and Damage. Therefore, I situate the results of this dissertation within the policy discussions about migration as adaptation (Gemenne & Blocher 2017) and about Loss and Damage (Thomas & Benjamin 2020). By identifying the well-being effects of climate (im)mobilities and explaining their fundamental mechanisms of action, this dissertation aims to help devise better policies and improve planning to meet people’s complex needs at the national or subnational levels and to allocate scarce government resources more efficiently. Moreover, the findings could inform international adaptation efforts and help development donors devise programs that target people’s needs more effectively. Third, the study strives to humanize the debates on climate migration. Climate migrants are often portrayed as passive victims, scapegoats, profiteers, or security threats, or they are framed in other ways that ignore the human dimension and complexity of climate migration (e.g. Bettini 2013; Durand-Delacre et al. 2021; Geddes et al. 2012; Hartmann 2010; Myers 1993). By demonstrating how migrating from or remaining in areas facing climate hazards shapes human well-being, I attempt to place the affected people and the stories of their attempts to confront climate hazards at the center of the discussion. The focus on multiple nuances of human well-being aims to provide a view of climate migrants and stayers as complex human beings with needs, emotions, fears, and hopes who are attempting to live a life that they have reason to value despite the challenges they face.

3 Structure of the Dissertation

To achieve these objectives, this dissertation is structured in three main parts.

  1. (1)

    The first part “Setting the Stage” includes the introduction, the conceptual framework, the research approach, and a review of the existing evidence base.

  2. (2)

    The second part “At Risk of Deprivation” details the empirical results and discussion of each case study, a comparative analysis of these case studies, and the induction of propositions regarding the research questions.

  3. (3)

    Finally, the concluding part “Seeing Behind the Curtain” presents the implications, recommendations, and research needs following from this dissertation. It closes by providing an outlook on possible future developments regarding the nexus between climate (im)mobilities and well-being.

In the first part, I set the stage for the research and subsequently explain the conceptual framework of the dissertation. To understand the initiation and conditions of migration, I draw on the Aspirations-Capabilities Framework (de Haas 2014, 2021). To analyze the impacts of migrating or staying, I build on a resource-based model of migrant transitions (Ryan et al. 2008) and use a locally grounded well-being concept drawing on theories of human needs (Gough 2015) and SWB (Diener & Tay 2016). In the following chapter, I explain the implications of the applied research philosophy of critical realism. Based on this discussion, I detail the mixed methods research design with two concurrent streams of qualitative and quantitative methods that I applied to answer the research questions. The qualitative strand is central and draws on primary data collected in interviews with 81 affected people and 12 focus group participants. I analyze this data using qualitative text analysis (Kuckartz 2014b; Kuckartz & Rädiker 2019). More than 60 discussions with experts add contextual information. In addition, for the displacement case, I use regression analyses based on large-scale data from two Peruvian surveys to examine differential displacement risk and well-being impacts (INEI 2017a, 2018a). To provide a baseline for the following empirical analysis, this first part of the dissertation closes by reviewing the existing evidence on the nexus between hazards, (im)mobilities, and well-being.

In the second part of the dissertation, I discuss the empirical results of the case studies carried out in Peru’s three large topographical areas. First, I perform a qualitative analysis of the well-being impacts of internal migration from areas with gradual climate hazards in Peru’s highlands and immobility in home villages. This migration occurred mostly from rural to urban areas and in the context of progressive climate hazards emerging from glacier retreat and rainfall changes. The second case study adds qualitative results on a special case of migration, in which people aspire to move but have low capabilities to pursue migration. It analyzes the outcomes of two communities threatened by abrupt riverine flooding that requested planned relocation to more secure sites within Peru’s rainforest. Only one of them succeeded in relocating after many years of limbo; the second is still in involuntary immobility at the time of writing. In the third results chapter, I analyze qualitative and quantitative data to understand differential displacement risk and how people have fared following displacement due to abrupt flooding during the 2017 Coastal El Niño. At the end of each of the three case studies, I induce propositions on well-being dynamics in climate (im)mobilities by drawing on the observed well-being effects and mechanisms of action. This part of the dissertation ends with a comparative analysis of the findings of the three case studies, in which I use the full evidence base to induce overarching propositions on well-being impacts related to climate (im)mobilities.

To conclude, I highlight the broader implications of these findings, provide recommendations for how to enhance or preserve well-being in climate (im)mobilities, identify areas where additional research is required, and provide an outlook on possible future dynamics in Peru and beyond.