Credit: Jessica Amerson
Castro’s research into climate change impacts and climate migration draws on the fields of environmental studies, human geography, urban planning, and public policy.
When Brianna Castro was a Peace Corps volunteer in Tubará, a village in rural northeastern Colombia, the region faced a major drought. Rainwater stores had run out. Vegetation was drying up. Cows were dying. Yet, instead of leaving the region, people found ways to adapt — and that intrigued her.
“The lengths people will go to remain in place really surprised me. They continue to live in places with no food and no water.” Castro said. “This experience really brought together the climate migration nexus for me.”
Castro — who will join the faculty in January as an assistant professor in the field of urban sustainability — grew up in rural North Carolina in Alamance County, which had a high percentage of immigrants. While an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she did extensive research on migrants and deportees. After earning her bachelor’s degree in public policy, she worked in community development.
She said her time in Colombia helped her decide to marry her interest in the environment with her interest in issues connected to immigration and pursue research on migration and climate adaptation.
She earned a doctorate in sociology at Harvard University, completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Maryland’s Program for Society and the Environment, and most recently was an assistant professor of environmental sociology at Vanderbilt University, where she directed CLIMA Labs, which examines legal frameworks that shape migration.
Understanding how climate change shapes our everyday lives is critical to designing sustainable cities.”
“Brianna brings an international perspective to YSE,” said Karen Seto, the Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science. “She will expand the school’s urban perspective through a qualitative, sociological lens. I am thrilled that Dr. Castro is joining the YSE faculty. She will be a real asset to our students and community.”
Castro's research, which has included field work in Nigeria, Madagascar, Mexico, North Carolina, and Montes de María, Colombia, reveals how people integrate climate responses into their daily routines — from adjusting work schedules during heat waves to fortifying homes against flooding — challenging traditional top-down approaches to climate adaptation in the process.
“Understanding how climate change shapes our everyday lives is critical to designing sustainable cities,” Castro said.
While there is a lot of focus on disasters such as hurricanes, fires, and flooding, people are adapting to slower-moving climate change impacts every day, her research found. When people do move as a response to climate change impacts, it’s often a sequence of events and decisions that drive their migration, she noted.
“Climate migration is a series of sequential decisions rather than one moment when a family chooses to stay or go,” Castro said. “We tend to invest so much in staying where we are.”
Part of the decision to stay or go is based on how governments and communities are aiding residents in adapting to and building resilience to climate change. Castro said residents who want to stay in their homes reach a point where they ask themselves, “Can I continue to live here?”
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Families face different types of needs before, during, and after a climate event. When an extreme weather event first hits, such as flooding, they may need immediate shelter to escape flood waters. After, they may need additional support to rebuild homes, find a new job if a company shut down, or if they have to migrate to a new location.
“We have to think about climate migration as a process rather than just an outcome and what happens before, during, and after the decision to move,” she said.
At YSE, Castro will continue her work leading CLIMA Labs, assessing the effectiveness of current policies and providing research-based recommendations. She is also examining disparities in the ability of residents to adapt to climate change and the levels of support they receive if they move.
One major hurdle to developing more effective policies is the lack of universally accepted criteria to determine who is a climate migrant. There is no international legal definition, she noted.
“We want to find out what’s working and scale it so there is support for these moves,” Castro said.
Diane Davis, Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism at Harvard University’s Department of Urban Planning and Design, emphasized that Castro’s interdisciplinary research has strengthened the field of climate adaptation.
“Brianna brings a wide range of disciplinary entry points, deeply engrained knowledge of the global north and south, and an enviable grasp of ethnographic research methods to her research on environmental migration and climate mobilities,” Davis said.
