Migration from Resource Depletion: The Case of the Faroe Islands

Abstract

Modern fisheries crises present special cases of the boom-and-bust cycles common to natural-resource-dependent communities. The Faroe Islands, an affluent North Atlantic society that is among the most fisheries dependent on earth, experienced a crisis during the 1990s after resources became depleted through a combination of overfishing and environmental stress. Unemployment and business failures ensued; out-migration, mainly by young adults, altered the size and composition of the islands' population. Out-migration paralleled changes in fish catches. In the wake of this crisis, the islands' population now is older. Smaller communities tend to have deficits of young women, although that pattern predates the recent crisis. These findings replicate observations from other fisheries-dependent societies, but during the Faroese crisis the demographic impacts of environmental change were notably rapid and strong.