The argument that environmental change is an important driving force of migration has experienced a strong revival in the climate change context. We contribute to the bourgeoning empirical literature in this field by focusing on the micro-level. We examine whether and why different environmental stressors aspire people to move. The analysis relies on newly collected survey data of approximately 1800 households residing along the 200 kilometers of the Jamuna River in Bangladesh. We employ a quasi-experimental design to compare affected and unaffected populations at a similar baseline risk in experiencing different types of environmental events in order to isolate the causal effect of deteriorating environmental livelihoods on migration aspirations. The results suggest that individual perceptions of negative environmental conditions motivate people to consider moving away from their homes. However, while short-term environmental events, i.e., floods do not affect migration aspirations, long-term environmental events, i.e., riverbank erosion increase aspirations for permanent internal migration. These results suggest that depending on the type of environmental event, people might prefer adaptation to migration, and hence they entail important policy implications with regard to the effects of climate change on future internal migration flows.