The island of Puerto Rico is one of the world’s oldest colonies, as it has been under colonial rule since 1493. Spain was the first to colonize it, then the United States (US) Annexed it in the Spanish-American War of 1898. This still has drastic effects on the way Puerto Ricans live their lives today, as the Jones Act of 1920 limits the number of foreign imports the island can get. The Jones Act of 1920 was enacted to make sure all goods transported by water are carried on US ships, and that the crew of the ship also be from the US. They need to go through a flagship state, such as Florida, and have an 11% tax on those imports. Puerto Rico also faces a financial debt issue, as most of that debt comes from predatory hedge fund companies from the US. The US government stepped in to help Puerto Rico with their debt issue, resulting in the privatization of public utilities and cuts to public programs and services. These underlying factors have caused Puerto Ricans to migrate out of the island, as the most common reasons Puerto Ricans migrate to the US is poor economic conditions, decayed infrastructure, government corruption, and neighborhood crime. Climate change has been exacerbating these issues as well, including struggles with poverty, as this compounds the harm to the people living in these marginalized communities. Understanding the way that climate change exacerbates these complex and historical issues of Puerto Rico will better help us understand how to navigate these issues and help the people of the island. 

The framework that will best help understand the process of migration that Puerto Ricans go through before leaving the island will be the Aspirations-capabilities framework. This framework helps explain how one has to process one’s aspirations and capabilities to even think about migrating from their homeland. This framework helps explain the complex process of migration and how there is a lot more influence on it than just pull/push factors. This shows us how aspirations and capabilities are affected by positive and negative liberties and how these may affect mobility freedoms and migration decisions. It involves negative liberty, positive liberty, aspirations, capabilities, mobility, migration, and non-migration. Negative liberty is the external constraint that doesn’t allow an individual to have/express freedom. Negative liberty affects both aspirations and capabilities; the interaction between these two explains complex, sometimes confusing migration choices. An example of this would be how political violence or government oppression would increase migration aspirations, but the same factors may also deprive them of the capability to migrate, such as exit restrictions or staying back to protect family and loved ones from this violence. Aspirations reflect a person’s general life preferences as well as their subjective perceptions about opportunities and life elsewhere. Capabilities are the resources an individual has in terms of finance, social, or human. Mobility deprivation can happen either through negative liberty deprivation or positive liberty deprivation – when people lack access to social, cultural, and economic resources needed for realizing their migration aspirations. Mobility is the capacity to choose where to live, including the option to stay. Positive liberty is the ability to take control of one’s life and realize their purpose. Migration is the act of moving away from one’s home to find better opportunities elsewhere, and non-migration is the act of staying home, regardless of whether they are aware of the choices they have or do not have the freedom to do so. 

How is climate change affecting Puerto Ricans living in Lares, Puerto Rico, and how is it affecting migration patterns there? As scholars have seen in other situations, climate change is exacerbating the already existing issues of colonialism on the island, as economic inequality, poverty, and housing insecurity are being drastically increased when natural disasters hit the island. There seems to be a big focus on the economics of Puerto Rico and how migration plays a role there, but there hasn’t been much research done on the social aspect of it, especially the mental health of the people living on the island or the diaspora that has been affected by climate change and the political tensions in Puerto Rico. 

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