Climate Migration and Receiving Community Institutional Capacity in the US Gulf Coast

In this report, the authors review findings from five separate studies of community impacts, capacity, and responses to climate migration across five institutional domains: employment and economic development, financial institutions and financial health, health care systems, housing markets, and social, cultural, and recreational institutions. The studies use mixed-methods data collected from three US Gulf Coast communities that have received climate migrants following catastrophic climate change: Houston, Texas, as a receiving community for climate migrants from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005; the Orlando, Florida, region as a receiving community for climate migrants from Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in 2016; and inland Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes in Louisiana as a receiving region for climate migrants displaced by land loss, worsening storms, and hurricanes in the far southern coastal region of the state. Three overarching research questions guided the five studies: what institutional conditions existed in receiving communities before the arrival of climate migrants; how did local institutions and providers respond to these migrants; and to what extent have institutional conditions and capacities changed over time.

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