Presentation short abstract

Challenging reductionist framings of "climate-induced migration", this paper situates present mobility within longer histories. It argues that migration is a continuum of culturally embedded and structurally conditioned adaptive practice than a novel response to climate change.

Presentation long abstract

“Climate-induced migration” is increasingly portrayed as a novel and an emergent phenomenon, particularly in the Global South. Such framings often assume a linear, deterministic relationship between environmental change and human mobility, overlooking the historical, cultural and structural contexts within which mobility unfolds. Yet, current climate-migration narratives in Nepal rely on such deterministic framings. This paper challenges these narratives by situating contemporary climate-related mobility within longer histories and argues for migration to be understood as a continuum of culturally embedded and structurally and intersectionally conditioned practices, rather than a novel response to climate change. Historically, migration has been central to the Nepal Himalaya, shaped by a confluence of structural pressures and opportunities including state-making processes, food and livelihood insecurity, colonial legacies, economic liberalisation, civil war, disasters, and shifting socioeconomic aspirations. Migration is rarely attributable to a single factor, but rather reflects a dynamic interplay of socioeconomic, environmental, and political factors shaping how people navigate uncertainty. Drawing on a historical review and an ethnographic fieldwork in Lamjung and Khotang, findings reveal that while climate change is intensifying livelihood precarity, especially among rural agrarian communities, present day migration builds on and extends longer trajectories of movement shaped by poverty, agrarian change, cultural shifts, and broader developmental processes. Attending to how intersectional subjectivities mediate mobility opportunities and vulnerabilities highlights the wider structural and aspirational dimensions of migration. Such an analysis offers a more nuanced, relational, and dynamic understanding of migration as a persistent adaptive strategy during times of uncertainty in the Himalaya.