Dangers and Drivers of Displacement

Central America

By Brooke Pascarella
displacement, migration, migrants,

This project examines the dangers and drivers of displacement in Central America.

This project is an advocacy tool that examines the dangers and drivers of displacement in Central America. The drivers of displacement are the reasons behind why migrants to decide to flee their homes and seek refuge outside; and the dangers are what migrants face on their journey to seek refuge.

Displacement is defined as “the movement of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters.”

The main drivers that I discuss in the content section are conflict/violence, socioeconomic, and natural disasters. However, in the map, I only use a dataset on conflict/violence. The dataset used is by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED).

Once a person makes the difficult decision to flee their homes, they must traverse the dangerous journey north where they are subject to exploitation, violence, and harsh elements. My second dataset looks at migrants who have died or gone missing along the migratory route north. I use the Missing Migrants Project database by the International Migration Organization (IMO).