Environmentally driven migration will pose an increasing challenge throughout the 21st Century and will contribute to further environmental change, as migrants move in search of resources, often drawn to forest frontier areas with high value for biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, rural-rural migration is poorly studied compared to migration to cities and the mechanisms by which migrants impact natural habitats are poorly understood. Madagascar has suffered severe droughts linked to climate change, leading to significant internal migration, reaching almost every part of the island. This puts additional pressures on protected areas and on the communities who rely on their natural resources. Mangabe Protected Area in eastern Madagascar is managed by the Malagasy conservation NGO Madagasikara Voakajy and supported by Chester Zoo’s Global Conservation Programme. Together, they have identified immigration as one of their most serious challenges. Therefore, working with partners, the successful applicant will use Mangabe as a model system to explore some of the key questions in rural-rural migration, contributing to both protected area management and theoretical debates.

The PhD will involve periods of field work in Madagascar. Data collection methods are likely to include quantitative methods, including surveys with immigrants and longer-term residents, choice experiments or experimental games and social network analysis, as well as qualitative approaches including focus groups and semi-structured interviews.

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Deadline: May 5, 2025