Interrogating the Links between Climate Change, Migration, and Immobility.
Panel P06 at conference DSA2023: Crisis in the Anthropocene: rethinking connection and agency for development.
Countering simple narratives of mass climate migration under the Anthropocene, this panel presents new research clarifying the links between climate change, migration, and immobility across development contexts.
Long Abstract:
For more than thirty years, research published by scientists and reports in the news media have warned that climate change will cause mass migration and displacement on a global scale. A predominant early assumption was that climate change and migration have a linear, cause-and-effect relationship, in which climate induced drought, rising sea levels, and natural disasters result in the movement of affected populations. Approaches to forecasting climate migration initially focused on hazard mapping: identifying areas threatened by climate change and assuming the vast majority of residents of affected areas would be forced to leave. This led to catastrophic projections of future climate migrations and environmental refugees (Brown 2008; McLeman 2014). Fortunately, these early projections have failed to become reality. They did not adequately account for how climate-related factors interact with non-climate related drivers of migration, the potential for in-situ adaptation, and instances in which climate change impacts may suppress mobility, particularly in low-income countries or among more vulnerable and marginalized populations. There is growing recognition that the relationship between climate change and migration is often indirect, non-linear, and sometimes counter-intuitive.
This panel invites new conceptual and empirical research interrogating the links between climate change, migration, and immobility. We seek papers exploring how the impacts of climate change intersect with existing mobility systems and development conditions to affect the nature, volume, direction, and composition of migration flows. We also invite papers focused on adaptation and immobility in this context.
This article provides a critical analysis of the climate migration narrative and discourse and applies it to the latest flooding in Pakistan. As a result it provides a critical analysis of forced displacement, mobility, and immobility, and climate displacement-related policies.
Paper long abstract:
Academic research, large international organization reports, and popular media discourse have been increasingly focusing on the presumed impact of climate related events on migration and displacement. The predominant narrative that emerges from this recent work is the one predicting movements of large numbers of people across national borders as a result of climate change. In this article we analyze the climate-migration narrative in three different areas: academic research and discourse, large multilateral organization reports, and media discourse. We then look at these narratives and their analysis in the context of the summer 2022 flooding events in Pakistan to understand what their impact is on policy and the most at risk populations themselves. Through this case study we provide critical analysis of definitions and understandings of forced displacement, mobility, immobility, border regimes, and climate-related displacement policies and their outcomes.
Migration from the climate-affected Sundarabans is typically short term. Cities offer unstable, low wage informal work. Rural communities remain emotionally tied to a possible future well-being based in the village
Paper long abstract:
The Indian Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove ecosystem, is a collection of several hundred islands, in southern West Bengal. Surrounding the Reserve Forests, where human habitation is disallowed, is the Transition Zone of villages, along the major tidal rivers. Here long standing economic backwardness now intermesh in complex ways, with climate related environmental changes, both gradual and episodic, threatening the existence of some of the islands, and challenging rural households with the erosion of land and water as means of livelihoods. 75% of households send at least one person out to earn, typically an adult male who engages in seasonal, short term work in agriculture, construction or services.
A pilot study in two villages ( Godkhali and Satyanarainpur) revealed parallel but overlapping trajectories of households which stay and cope, individuals who migrate and return. The paper highlights vulnerabilities of households at the point of origin and individuals at the point of destination. What impels migrants to return? This research shows that the city had no place in their imagination, they dreamt of a future where their village might provide them work, schools and hospitals. Migrants’ access to only informal, low-wage urban work calls into question India’s current model of urbanisation and development. At the same time, villagers remain emotionally and materially tied to a breath taking coastal landscape, where tranquillity and threat are interlaced, invoking concepts like ma-er khamar ( mother’s’s granary) and jomi jolojyanto ( the living land) to describe a space that somehow sustains them.
I offer a post-colonial perspective to human (im)mobility in the context of climate change and disasters. My paper will draw on existing literature on 'inherent vulnerability' to discuss how constraints of small size and colonial legacies impact state-based policy options for Caribbean SIDS.
Paper long abstract:
Incidences of cross-border displacement within the context of disasters have increased over the last decade in the Anglo-phone Caribbean. Ad hoc measures have emerged through intra-regional mobility frameworks to accommodate these movements, and there has been a growing discourse around human mobility within the context of climate change propelled by external donor agencies. However, unlike the Pacific, where arrangements with metropole states have been crafted as potential responses to climate-induced migration in the near and long-term, the Caribbean has not developed similar initiatives. This paper explores the reasons for this seeming policy deficit, given the region’s extreme vulnerability to climate change. The paper questions whether, within the context of hypermobility – rates of emigration from the region are some of the highest globally, such a pre-emptive policy approach is necessary. Secondly, the paper considers the possibilities for immobile populations, which are left behind during disasters, due to geophysical limitations of small size. Are there viable solutions for these small states which face multi-dimensional vulnerabilities? The paper draws on four country case studies, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Montserrat, to argue that inherent vulnerabilities combined with colonial legacies, impact state-based policy options with respect to (im)mobile populations affected by climate change and disasters. By considering the mobility spectrum in the range of state-based policy responses to climate change and disasters in the Caribbean, this paper makes a valuable contribution to the discourse on post-coloniality and the resilience (and viability) of small island developing states.
Meanings of land and situated histories to foreground new insights into the method of understanding the interrelations between climate change, migration and immobility.
Paper long abstract:
I introduce India’s Kuttanad in Kerala, whose unique wetland region is famous for its below-sea-level paddy farming to locate the interrelations of climate change, migration and immobility. Mobilizing Escobar (2019)’s ‘relational ontologies’ is essential to explore how these three realms are entangled, interactive and contested within, but also with other multiple ‘contemporaneous’ spaces (Massey 2005).
Existing narratives on the agricultural past of Kuttanadu intersect with its indigenous adaptive practices to environmental challenges. In recognition of such farming, this site was declared a Globally significant Agricultural Heritage System (GIAS) by the United Nations in 2013. However, changing rainfall patterns, floods and rising sea levels create challenges for the local groups, forcing them to migrate. Though many migrated to varied ‘safer’ places, many families stayed back, unwilling to relocate. Why do they not want to migrate? Are meanings of land more than just a commodity? Are they immobile because various factors restrict their movement? Or do they have the agency to adapt to climate change?
My case study mobilizes the politics of immobility, memory, territorial effect, and uneven geographies posed by sinking lands. My analytics helps unpack the multilayered challenges of climate change, situated in local histories and politics of various constellations of groups. Understanding these help explore the possibilities of policies as a practiced space to construct frames for future developments. Doing so acknowledges diverse practices, memories, imaginations, and the politics of knowledge production in a relational way to invent and reinvent new ways of decision-making from the ground.
This study will examine the connection between caste, space and land in the spatial geography of Indian villages and their effect on the agency in migration and immobility. It studies the impact of caste structure in environmental migration, as a case study for climate change led migration in India.
Paper long abstract:
Understanding the relationship between structure and agency in migration is of contemporary importance. In Indian villages, where spatial distribution of settlements and land relations are decided predominantly by caste, its role in the dichotomy of structure-agency in environmental migration has to be studied. However, the scholarly community has long neglected the ‘structural’ impact of the caste system on the agency of environmental migrants. The main objective of this paper is to analyze how the agency of migrants is shaped by vulnerability and capability, both of which are structured by the caste system.
This study focuses on Seppakkam, a village in north Chennai, Tamil Nadu, which is located near a coal ash pond. It is severely affected by coal ash pollution because of leakages in the mounds and pipelines. This pollution led to people’s migration, but different caste communities have migrated differently and some are still stuck in the village. Using a combination of survey and semi-structured interviews, this paper examines the factors impacting migration and immobility in Seppakkam.
It is found that the Dalits were the first to be impacted and the first to migrate. Meanwhile, the dominant, land-owning caste faces difficulties in leaving due to the decrease in land value caused by the pollution. The paper also studies the role of the State in altering these vulnerabilities and capabilities created by the caste structure. Furthermore, this paper discusses how the findings of this case can be extended to enhance our understanding of migrations driven by climate change in India.
Women are among the most vulnerable populations disproportionately affected by climate related migration and immobility. I will discuss how gender influences migration and immobility in the context of climate change in sub-Saharan Africa, to add to the growing body of literature.
Paper long abstract:
Climate change has caused devastating impact on migration and immobility in sub-Saharan Africa. However, gender and patriarchal traditions influence people's decision to migrate in search for food and livelihoods, while others stay despite growing climate risk due to spiritual and historical attachment to a place, a sense of identity and belonging, or the lack of money and poor health. Among the most vulnerable populations disproportionately affected by climate change, which can drive migration or immobility, are women, as they may have limited resources to adapt and cope with changing climate. For instance, the impact of climate change on natural resources such as water and land can lead to increased competition and conflict, further exacerbating power imbalances and making it difficult for women to access the resources they need to survive. Additionally, one fourth of all economically active women are engaged in agriculture globally, where they must contend with climate consequences such as crop failure and food security and by 2050, wheat production alone may fall by 36% in sub-Saharan Africa. Climate migration and immobility, particularly its relation to gender has recently triggered a growing body of literature. Using the indicator approach, this paper draws upon review of available literature and data that examines gender and vulnerability to climate-induced migration, while recognizing its interrelationship with immobility to transform this complex challenge into opportunities.
has 3 downloads
3