Climate-health risk (In)visibility in the context of everyday humanitarian practice

Nongovernmental migrant shelters in Mexico play a key role in documenting the factors that shape forced migration from Central America. Existing intake protocols in shelters are largely oriented to humanitarian legal frameworks that determine eligibility for international protection based on interpersonal violence and political persecution. This qualitative study calls attention to how existing humanitarian logics may obscure climate- and health-related disruptions as drivers of forced migration from Central America in the context of everyday humanitarian practice. In May 2022 we compared migrant's responses (n = 40) to a standardized intake protocol at a nongovernmental humanitarian migrant shelter in Mexico with responses to semi-structured interviews that focused on migrants' perceptions of climate change and health as drivers of forced displacement. We found that slow- and rapid-onset climatic disruptions; illness and disease; and various forms of violence and repression are often interrelated drivers of forced displacement. Comparing intake protocols and in-depth interview responses, we found that climate- and health-related drivers of forced displacement are rarely documented. These findings speak to the importance of critically examining everyday humanitarian practices in the context of ongoing advocacy that calls for climate-related disruptions to be integrated into existing humanitarian protection frameworks. •Climate-health risks contribute to forced displacement from Central America•Central Americans often access humanitarian migrant shelters while crossing Mexico.•Climate-health risks as migration drivers are rarely documented in shelters.•Shelters mediate how climate-health risks are made known, obscured, and governed.