Abstract: In the face of climate ch

Abstract: In the face of climate change-induced economic uncertainties, households may employ
migration as an adaptation strategy to diversify their livelihood portfolio through remittances.
However, it is unclear whether such climate-related migration will be documented or
undocumented. In this study we combined detailed migration histories with daily temperature
and precipitation information from 214 weather stations to investigate whether climate change
more strongly impacted undocumented or documented migrations from 68 rural Mexican municipalities
to the U.S. from 1986−1999. We employed two measures of climate change, the
warm spell duration index (WSDI) and precipitation during extremely wet days (R99PTOT).
Results from multi-level event-history models demonstrated that climate-related international
migration from rural Mexico was predominantly undocumented. We conclude that programs to
facilitate climate change adaptations in rural Mexico may be more effective in reducing undocumented
border crossings than increasing border fortification.