While working about squatter settlements in Suva, Fiji, it became clear that people move to places that have plenty environmental risks (flooding, contaminated water and other unhealthy environments,.....). In discourses about people's mobility related to climate change it is often expressed that such movements are to take people away from dangerous places.
Here we have just the opposite.... they move to places that are dangerous in many regards.....
Do you have similar examples or know about literature that deals with such matter in conceptual and/or empirical ways?
I recently reviewed a manuscript submitted for publication that addressed the human service challenges associated with "boomtowns" that might be relevant to your question. Despite obvious weaknesses in the housing and social services, people relocate to boomtowns because of the perception of the availability of jobs.
This is a really nice question, which makes me tempted to ask for further clarification on what qualifies as "environmentally dangerous". For instance, could we say that smog is an environmental danger? If yes, many of us who do data collection in urban centres are exposed to a certain danger.
I appreciate that your question may refer to something more intricate - only, it is genuinely interesting to think about environmental dangers lurking in unexpected places of doing research.
Establishment of reserves during the colonial period in most southern African countries might be a good example. In Zimbabwe, for example, local people were forcibly moved to areas that were infested with tsetse flies, mosquitoes and prone to drought. I recently submitted a paper that addresses this trend.
The environmental risk factor is one of many factors that influence where people choose their livelihoods. Economic opportunities often tramp considerations of environmental risks. China probably is a case in point. People often follow the money, despite bad air and other environmental risks. Migration from rural to urban areas often means moving toward increased environmental risks, e.g. smog. There are many studies on China's internal migration in relation to the economy and the environment. Here are two:
Cannon, T. (2000). China's economic growth : The impact on regions, migration and the environment. Houndmills : New York: Macmillan Press ; St. Martin's Press.
Gaetano, A., & Jacka, Tamara. (2012). On the Move Women and Rural-to-Urban Migration in Contemporary China. New York: Columbia University Press.
I have had a couple of clients (fortune 500 companies) over the years who have actually had employees transfer to another area (for example, one went from Chicago to San Diego) to be with their friends (usually one or two such friends, and usually people they had originally met at work). The primary draw - they had found a local bar across the border into Mexico where they could "unwind", most likely get into a fight, get arrested on Friday night and still be out in time to return to work Monday morning. SO while the move was not directly related to an increased sense of a dangerous environment, it seemed the primary reason was to be close enough to quickly get into a dangerous environment, supported by peers.
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