Low-lying atoll islands are especially threatened by anticipated sea-level rise, and migration is often mentioned as a potential response of these island societies. Further, small island states are developing population, economic and adaptation policies to plan the future. Policies, such as raising of islands or land reclamation, require a long-term vision on populations and migration. However, population and migration systems in small island settings are poorly understood. To address this deficiency requires an approach that considers changing environmental and socio-economic factors and individual migration decision-making. This article introduces the conceptual model of migration and explores migration within one small island nation, the Maldives, as an example. Agent-based simulations of internal migration from 1985–2014 are used as a basis to explore a range of potential demographic futures up to 2050. The simulations consider a set of consistent demographic, environmental, policy and international migration narratives, which describe a range of key uncertainties. The capital island Malé has experienced significant population growth over the last decades, growing from around 67,000 to 153,000 inhabitants from 2000 to 2014, and comprising about 38 percent of the national population in 2014. In all future narratives, which consider possible demographic, governance, environmental and globalization changes, the growth of Malé continues while many other islands are effectively abandoned. The analysis suggests that migration in the Maldives has a strong inertia, and radical change to the environmental and/or socio-economic drivers would be needed for existing trends to change. Findings from this study may have implications for national development and planning for climate change more widely in island nations.

低洼的环礁岛屿尤其受到预期海平面上升的威胁，人们经常提到移民是这些岛屿社会的潜在反应。此外，小岛屿国家正在制定人口、经济和适应政策来规划未来。提高岛屿或开垦土地等政策需要对人口和移民有长远的眼光。然而，人们对小岛屿环境中的人口和迁移系统知之甚少。为了解决这一缺陷，需要一种考虑不断变化的环境和社会经济因素以及个人移民决策的方法。本文介绍了移民的概念模型，并以马尔代夫这个小岛国的移民为例进行了探讨。1985 年至 2014 年基于代理的内部移民模拟被用作探索到 2050 年的一系列潜在人口未来的基础。这些模拟考虑了一组一致的人口、环境、政策和国际移民叙述，这些叙述描述了一系列关键的不确定性。首都马累岛在过去几十年里经历了显着的人口增长，从 2000 年到 2014 年的居民从大约 67,000 人增加到 153,000 人，占 2014 年全国人口的 38%。环境和全球化的变化，马累的增长仍在继续，而许多其他岛屿实际上已被废弃。分析表明，马尔代夫的移民具有很强的惯性，要改变现有趋势，就需要对环境和/或社会经济驱动因素进行根本性的改变。这项研究的结果可能对岛国更广泛的国家发展和气候变化规划产生影响。