Abstract
In Belarus, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster caused a large scale land contamination by radioactive pollution. As a consequence, many people had to move/migrate voluntarily or involuntarily from the heavily polluted areas, forming a large group of "true" environmental migrants.
The purpose of the conducted field research was to find out the present socio-economic situation of the environmental migrants, focusing on the present quality of life of the environmental migrants with respect to the quality of life before the disaster. In addition, the obtained results were also compared with the situation of people who decided not to migrate and stayed behind to live in the polluted areas.
As a result, the main reasons that led the migrants to leave or to remain in the contaminated area were identified as well. The research findings point out personal, behavioural and psychological factors as the key factors in the migration decision making process and it also shows that economic and environmental reasons for migration are interlinked and ought to be considered as a joint structure.