I recently attended an academic conference titled “Multiplied Displacements: The Climate-Housing Nexus” because its themes align closely with the research I do in my master’s program, Global Affairs and Human Security, and I wanted to gain deeper insights into how global climate and housing issues manifest on a social level. As the ISS-USA International Program Management intern, attending the conference helped to uncover the explicit, systemic ways the climate-housing nexus directly tears families apart. The connection between climate-induced housing instability and family separation is rooted in a cycle of multiplied displacement where the intersection of precarious legal and economic status, exclusionary housing policies, and a global climate crisis forces immigrants into a cycle of finding, making, and repeatedly losing their homes.
The complex, multi-causal nature of climate mobility drove the conference’s interdisciplinary approach. Climate change acts as a “threat multiplier,” exacerbating existing social and economic inequities and creating a feedback loop of displacement. Multiplied displacement is a conceptual framework that helps understand the intersection of climatic and non-climatic factors and how they often make displacement a recurring process for the most vulnerable populations. Tens of millions of people are driven from their homes each year by climate and weather-related events. Climate displacement can be temporary or permanent, within a person’s own country or across international borders. As climate change-related events increasingly become part of the story of immigration to the United States—and because most immigrants in the U.S. live in only 12 metropolitan areas—urban migrants in this country frequently find a new home in a city only to lose it again due to systemic exclusion and climate impacts.
Immigrants experience unique vulnerability predicated on a direct link between “evictability” (the threat of losing shelter) and “deportability” (the danger of state-sanctioned removal from the country). The climate-housing nexus operates as a compounding force of instability, significantly increasing the risk of family separation. Exclusionary policies often relegate immigrant families to poor-quality, hazard-exposed housing in climate-vulnerable neighborhoods. Disasters disproportionately displace these residents, who face significant barriers to recovery aid—like FEMA—due to institutional bias toward homeowners and precarious legal statuses. This instability is compounded by climate gentrification, in which damaged rental units are often repurposed for wealthier residents, leaving low-income housing to be rebuilt slowly or completely abandoned.
The cycle of repeatedly losing homes prevents families from maintaining the secure housing often required—either legally or practically—to keep a family unified, while directly increasing the risk of deportation leading to permanent separation. Continuing to prioritize solutions that provide the stability needed to keep families together amid increased environmental shocks is crucial, as climate-induced displacement is becoming a growing concern. For 100 years, the ISS-USA has remained steadfast in its founding mission to restore and protect cross-border links between children and their families—a vision first championed in 1924 by a handful of visionary women to assist those displaced by the aftermath of World War I. While the primary global stressors have evolved from post-war migration to the contemporary, compounding crisis of the climate-housing nexus, the core objective of family unification remains the unwavering core mission.