Short Abstract

This roundtable discusses methodological innovation in exploring climate-related loss and agency. The dialogue addresses tensions between documenting hard-to-quantify loss and listening to agency, centering affected voices, diverse logics of loss, epistemic justice and cross-disciplinary approaches.

Long Abstract

The roundtable discussion would follow a panel proposed by the AMMODI CRG (Documenting loss and listening to agency: New methodological prisms for researching climate-related (im)mobilities) in a different session, inviting an L&D policy researcher (available), a migration scholar (available), and (an African) local practitioner (availability subject to funding) to form a three-way dialogue. The two sessions comprising of a panel and a roundtable focus on methodological innovation in capturing these intersections of impacts and agency, and seeks to explore the tensions and possibilities of fusion between "documenting loss", which is difficult to quantify, and "listening to agency”, which is difficult to standardize. The discussions here would also deliberate on collaboration and friction between climate scientists/researchers, migration researchers and practitioners in the field, combining the empirical needs of documenting loss and damage with the qualitative pursuit of subjectivity and meaning-making in migration research. Climate-related impacts and losses are proliferating, affecting livelihood practices, environmental conditions, social relations, and mobilities, including forced displacement and migration, as well as involuntary immobility. Climate-related losses and damages are understood to be highly personal and context-based, informed by individual and community values, cultures and priorities. They are also intertwined with agency, through individuals, households and communities’ own approaches and strategies to managing or responding to livelihood and mobility challenges. Understanding the interlinking of impacts and agency therefore requires methods that can capture locally anchored, ontologically diverse and highly personal perspectives and experiences.

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