Climate-Induced Migration and Its Relationship with Radicalization, Conflict, and Regional Security Challenges: A Mixed-Methods Empirical Analysis
Keywords:
Climate-induced Migration, Environmental Security, Radicalisation, Conflict, Governance, Socioeconomic MarginalisationAbstract
Climate change affects human mobility by increasing the frequency of floods, droughts, sea-level rise, and heat stress, and by desertification, disrupting livelihoods, but the security implications remain empirically contested. This article reviews how climate migration affects radicalisation, conflict, and regional security challenges, as well as the governance mechanisms that can minimise these risks. The study is a convergent mixed-methods design, and the secondary quantitative indicators include IDMC, UNHCR, IOM, ACLED, Global Terrorism Database, Global Terrorism Index, Fragile States Index, World Bank and IPCC assessments, while the qualitative case evidence is from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Somalia, Sudan and Syria. Thematic coding, cross-case comparison, and pattern matching for qualitative analysis, and descriptive statistics, correlations, exploratory multiple regression, mediation, and moderation models for quantitative analysis are employed. The results reveal that there is no straightforward relationship between climate-induced migration and violence. The connection with violence is positive but low, and there are indications of 'radicalisation risk' where there is overlap with both displacement and socioeconomic marginalisation, the presence of armed groups and problematic access to land, water, jobs and services. Socioeconomic marginalisation is a factor in the dynamics between migration and conflict. At the same time, governance deficiencies also increase the likelihood that regional security stress will exacerbate migration and governance issues, including service delivery, border tensions, land issues, and conflict resolution. The study presents an empirically integrated framework that connects the fields of environmental security, human security, migration theory, and relative deprivation.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Fahad Khan, Taimoor Zeb Khan, Rabia Salim (Author)
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