When Climate Hits Home

Internal Migration and Mobility in the U.S. during the Age of the Great Acceleration

Jana Keck

Since 1901, sea levels along the U.S. coastline have risen significantly, with some regions like Louisiana’s Gulf Coast experiencing increases far above the global average. In these vulnerable areas—already stressed by industrial development, pollution, and ecological degradation—climate change is expediting the need to consider relocation as a form of adaptation. While climate-induced migration is often discussed in relation to the Global South, the United States has a long, largely overlooked history of internal displacement driven by environmental threats. This project explores how the U.S. has responded to such threats through the practice of managed retreat—the voluntary or government-supported relocation of communities out of harm’s way. Beginning in 1988, the year before James Hansen’s landmark Senate testimony on global warming, and ending in 2020, this study traces how federal, state, and local actors have facilitated—or resisted—relocation. Since 1989, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has supported retreat initiatives in 49 states, acquiring over 40,000 properties in flood-prone zones—yet these efforts remain fragmented and uneven. Focusing on case studies from the Gulf Coast, the Midwest, and Pacific regions, the project examines who moves, who decides, and what is gained or lost in the process. It investigates the institutional, emotional, and logistical barriers to retreat, while also attending to broader questions of environmental justice, housing policy, and historical memory. To make these patterns of displacement and resilience visible, the project incorporates digital mapping tools that trace property acquisitions, policy interventions, and shifting population geographies over time. Drawing from federal and local archives, scientific assessments, and community narratives, this research challenges the notion that climate-driven mobility is only a future problem—or simply a foreign one. It argues instead that climate migration is already reshaping the American landscape, and that understanding its past is essential to navigating its future.