Presentation short abstract

Deconstructing 'Population'. By tracing how climate policy and Malthusian thought frame certain lives as excessive or immobile, this paper exposes the colonial hierarchies shaping climate mobility and calls for justice grounded in embodied and territorial struggles.

Presentation long abstract

This article applies Carol Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Represented to Be?” framework to critically examine how the term ‘population’ is constructed in climate (im)mobilities discourse. Through a bifold analysis of policy documents (IPCC AR6 WGII, EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, Bangladesh NAP) and historical texts (Malthus, Ehrlich), it reveals how dominant framings of ‘population’ reproduce racialised, gendered, and colonial logics. These framings depoliticise displacement by abstracting diverse communities into demographic threats, erasing lived realities and reinforcing North-South mobility hierarchies. The study identifies three core functions of this problem representation: concealing the role of fossil fuel capitalism in climate-related displacement; legitimising containment policies that immobilise vulnerable populations; and reinforcing hierarchical mobility regimes that privilege populations in the so-called Global North. Integrating the decolonial feminist concept of Cuerpo-Territorio and juxtaposed to Malthusianism, the article argues for a redefinition of ‘population’ as a contested site of embodiment, territoriality, and power. Climate (im)mobilities should thus be addressed not as technocratic challenges but as embedded in struggles over land, sovereignty, and environmental justice. The study concludes by calling for a transformative approach based on mobility justice, decolonial land relations, and redistributive policies centred on the claims of communities most affected by climate change.