Using mobilities theory to study the nexus between climate change and human movement

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on ‘climate migration’ has traditionally focussed on the forced movement of people caused by the environmental impacts of climate change. However, this is only one part of the nexus between human movement and climate change. Consequently, researchers drawing on the ‘mobilities paradigm’, particularly those examining the topic of ‘mobility justice’, have sought to develop more encompassing conceptualisations of ‘climate mobilities’. In synthesising the different trajectories of this work, this paper identifies four key themes emerging within early ‘climate (im)mobilities’ scholarship. First, research on the way climate-related movement and stasis are represented and imagined. Second, examination of climate change’s impact on existing and ontologically significant (im)mobility practices. Third, analysis of the power relations that are enacted through climate (im)mobilities. And fourth, study of the inter-scalar nature of climate change-based (im)mobilities connecting disparate local mobility practices through their relationship to climate change. Research findings based on these themes are providing holistic accounts of the relationship between climate change and movement, and thus laying the groundwork for informed justice-based interventions in climate (im)mobility systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate (im)mobilities
• climate migration
• mobilities paradigm
• climate refugees
• climate justice
• mobility justice
• climate change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).