Format/Structure

Panel with four 10 min presentations and focus on critical discussion among presenters and audience

Long Abstract

This panel brings together theoretical approaches and case studies at the intersection of climate change, human (im)mobility and vulnerability. We aim to critically discuss how colonial and neocolonial systems contribute to geographic, economic, and social inequalities in the context of increasing climate change impacts, thereby making a contribution to both climate justice and political ecology debates. We invite papers which critically examine dominant discourses that ascribe vulnerability to so-called “at-risk” populations and explore alternative epistemologies of survival, resistance and political agency. We are particularly interested in papers that draw together two themes: Climate-induced (im)mobilities, and vulnerabilisation.

The process of identifying “the vulnerable” as an inherently fragile population in the Global South neglects the historical economic path-dependencies and power-asymmetries that created vulnerabilities in the first place. Instead, vulnerability should be understood as the “imaginative line drawn to separate what and who is expected to be in danger, and what and who is expected to be safe” (Weatherill 2023 p.12), thereby enforcing “politics of disposability” (p.12). Furthermore, Farbotko et al. (2023) argue that unequal colonial structures render some places “inevitably uninhabitable”, thus legitimizing the abandonment of some territories, while others continue to be seen as habitable in the context of climate change.

The process of vulnerabilisation is therefore particularly relevant for the issue of climate-induced displacement. Who has to (be) move(d) and who gets to stay in the face of increasing climate impacts is deeply hierarchical and embedded in (neo)colonial inequalities.

This panel asks:

• What changes about climate politics if vulnerability is understood as a constituted process, rather than a natural condition?

• What potential does resistance hold to change this conversation?

We use climate-induced displacement as an example to uncover how climate vulnerability is unequally produced and contested. Related cases are also welcome.

This Panel has 9 pending paper proposals.
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