This article investigates the pathways linking environmental and economic drivers of rural-to-urban migration in Mozambique. Using examples from two rural-to-urban migrant communities located in the coastal city of Beira, we build on a generalizable migration framework (Black et al., 2011) in order to explore how perception and lived experience influence migration decision-making in contexts of environmental stress. We combine content analysis and descriptive statistics of semi-structured interview and household survey data. Using a decision-tree diagram to trace pathways linking experiences of adverse weather to migration, we evaluate the relative strength with which respondents attribute migration to weather-related factors. Qualitative findings reveal that (1) the weather’s influence on migration falls on a spectrum of attribution, (2) while few migrants directly link their migration to weather-related factors, the overwhelming majority link weather to worsening economic conditions in origin areas, and (3) migrants reject the label of climate migrant, and maintain that migrating from rural areas is primarily an economic decision. Results indicate that people would stay in rural areas, regardless of extreme weather, if resilient economic livelihoods existed.

本文研究了莫桑比克农村和城市移民的环境和经济驱动因素之间的联系途径。我们使用位于沿海城市贝拉的两个农村到城市移民社区的例子，我们建立了一个可概括的移民框架（Black等人，2011），以探讨感知和生活经验如何影响背景下的移民决策环境压力。我们将内容分析与半结构化访谈和家庭调查数据的描述性统计相结合。使用决策树图跟踪将不利天气经历与迁徙联系起来的途径，我们评估了受访者将迁徙归因于天气相关因素的相对强度。定性研究结果表明：（1）天气对迁移的影响取决于归因范围，（2）虽然很少有移民将移民与天气因素直接相关，但绝大多数将天气与原籍地区的经济状况恶化联系在一起；（3）移民拒绝气候移民的标签，并坚持认为从农村移民是主要经济决定。结果表明，如果存在稳定的经济生计，无论极端天气如何，人们都将留在农村地区。