Presentation short abstract

Seasonal mobility in Jacobabad, Pakistan, challenges claims of future ‘uninhabitability.’ We show how heat-related movement between overheated Jacobabad and cooler Quetta is adaptive yet unequal, shaped by colonial land-making, social networks, and resource constraint.

Presentation long abstract

Seasonal and temporary mobility has long been central to how people navigate environmental and livelihood pressures. Yet contemporary debates on extreme heat increasingly frame certain places ‘uninhabitable’ in the future, projecting mass displacement in ways that reproduce environmentally deterministic narratives. Drawing on ongoing research in Jacobabad, Pakistan, a city with the highest recorded levels of humid heat, we explore how residents have ties to a neighbouring cooler city, Quetta, and have an established movement there over the summer. The city of Jacobabad was established by the colonialist, British Brigadier-General John Jacob, in 1847, who developed irrigation in the area, making a landscape that was previously viewed as ‘uninhabitable’ become ‘habitable’. However, with growing concerns over extreme heat in Jacobabad, similar ‘uninhabitable’ labels re-emerge, yet local responses illustrate a far more complex politics of adaptation, access, and constraint. We show that temporary mobility provides an important, though unevenly accessible, strategy for coping with extreme heat. Familial networks, resources, and historical connections shape who can move and under what conditions. By situating heat-related mobility within colonial land-making, contemporary inequalities, and differentiated livelihood possibilities, we argue for a political ecology of migration that avoids both technocratic optimism about mobility as an adaptive fix and alarmist predictions of inevitable permanent displacement.