Post by Will Granger. Colgate Class of 2022.

Source: Baker, A. (2021, April 22). “How Kenya Copes with Thousands of Displaced Climate Migrants.” Time.

Due to climate change, Kenya is currently experiencing intense internal flooding. Time Magazine sent one of their reporters to talk to natives in the area about how the flooding is causing mass migration from the region. Many—a former worker of a now-flooded campground says—are already being forced to migrate to neighboring towns and cities largely unprepared for the influx of workers. “The pressure of so many new arrivals will overwhelm the services providers,” he worries. “They are not prepared with housing, water, health care facilities or police.” Migration may be inevitable, but if the destination cannot absorb the new migrants, they may find themselves even worse off. Elizabeth Meyerhoff, a social anthropologist who studies rift valley communities describes the toil of economic migrants; “if you just lose your income that is one thing, because you can adapt. You find another job or another field,” says Meyerhoff. “But once you lose everything—your home, your school, your clinic, your road, your church—then it’s an impossible situation. You become an environmental migrant because you have to find those facilities in some other place.” 

As Cattaneo’s 2019 study on economic migration found; “migration can take many forms, ranging from internal to international and from seasonal displacement to permanent resettlement.” In the case of Kenya’s rift valley, where nothing short of a catastrophic drought—the kind that would also destroy livelihoods—will stop the rising waters, this migration from the region will likely be permanent. Moreover, these workers are flooding cities in the region that do not have the resources or capacity to efficiently absorb the influx of laborers into their workforce. As Kenya—and its neighboring country’s—tax laws are not as nuanced as the U.S.s’, it is possible that on a macro-level, this migration won’t have that large of a beneficial social impact. Rather, in smaller cities and communities that these displaced workers migrate to, wages for low-skilled laborers will fall as the supply of low-skilled laborers—now including these environmental migrants who may need to find a new line of work—increases substantially. This will lower wages for all, and because of the lack of resources, infrastructure, and facilities in these neighboring cities or communities, it is unlikely that the benefits of the amount of additional workers hired will offset the costs of the respective decrease in wage. Thus, this migration could hurt lower-skilled workers all around the region, with the only potential benefits including raising wages of high skilled workers with respect to the wages of low skilled workers (which is barely a benefit as it is a comparative increase in wages).