From climate migration to anthropocene mobilities: shifting the debate

Abstract

The Anthropocene epoch,' as Claire Colebrook describes it, 'appears to mark as radical a shift in species awareness as Darwinian evolution effected for the nineteenth century' (Colebrook 2017). The recent outpouring of ontological speculation on the Anthropocene across the humanities and social sciences certainly testifies to such a radical shift. Dipesh Chakrabarty's insights about the Anthropocene are emblematic (Chakrabarty 2009). The Anthropocene, he argues, marks not only the moment in which the human, Anthropos, becomes fully expressed in the Earth System, but also, paradoxically, the moment in which we lose our ability to grasp what it means to be human. Such a perspective captures well a sense in which the Anthropocene marks our passage into a geohistorical interregnum. As we depart from the geologic stability of the Holocene, so we leave behind the conceptual certainties of modernism, not least the fraught separation of Nature and Culture that has underpinned Euro-Western humanism from at least the fifteenth century onwards. Entering now an epoch in which the entanglements of social and geologic life are more and more ratified by the geosciences, it is no wonder that the social sciences and humanities have responded to the Anthropocene thesis by turning to ontological speculation. The Anthropocene is a scary business. Yet while the Anthropocene carries such far-reaching ontological consequences, those writing about it have had surprisingly little to say about the ontological primacy of mobility and movement, the ever-presence of movement in social life, and the insight that mobility is political and thus a fundamental mechanism of social stratification (although notable exceptions include Clark and Yusoff 2017; Colebrook 2017). This is unexpected given that the Anthropocene concept, by re-embedding human ontological awareness in deep time, draws us into ever closer proximity to Earth's geomorphology, its dynamism, its fluidity, the inherent mobility of the Earth system, or what Bronislaw Szerszynski calls 'planetary mobility' (Szerszynski 2016). One of the aims of this special issue of Mobilities on 'Anthropocene Mobilities' is to add to this speculative moment by positioning 'mobility' as a key term of reference for thinking with, through and against, the Anthropocene as either a philosophical problem, a political concept, a material condition, or an epoch of deep time. But if 'mobility' has been a somewhat muted category within discussions of the Anthropocene, so also it would seem the Anthropocene has been held to the peripheries of the mobility paradigm. A cursory keyword search of Mobilities, for example, suggests that concepts of 'Anthropocene', 'climate change' (i.e. impacts) and the 'environment' (i.e., the milieu of bio-and geophysical relations) have all played a relatively minor role in the mobilities paradigm since the inaugural issue of Mobilities in 2006 (notable exceptions include Szerszynski 2016; Adey and Anderson 2011; Blitz 2011). In pointing this out, however, we are not suggesting th...

A mobilities perspective on migration in the context of environmental change

“…While the term “mobility” is often taken to be a synonym for migration (see, for example, Adger, Safra de Campos, & Mortreux, ; Boas, ; Farbotko et al, ), we here refer to the mobilities approach as a distinct analytical perspective with theoretical and methodological implications (Hannam et al, ; Sheller & Urry, ; Urry, ). Recently, it has found increasing resonance in environmental and migration scholarship (Baldwin, Fröhlich, & Rothe, ; Boas, Kloppenburg, van Leeuwen, & Lamers, ; Gill, Caletrío, & Mason, ; Parsons, ; Schapendonk & Steel, ).…”

Environmental Mobility in a Polarized World: Questioning the Pertinence of the “Climate Refugee” Label for Pacific Islanders

“…This note strays from notions of climate displacement or migration and instead anchors analysis within the concept of “climate mobilities” (Boas et al 2019 ; Baldwin et al 2019 ). Because vulnerable communities are disproportionately affected by climate change and global capitalism, their adaptive capacities and mobility opportunities are subjected to contextual and intersectional forces that cannot be captured by the “climate refugee” label.…”

Critiquing and Joining Intersections of Disaster, Conflict, and Peace Research

“…Disaster researchers have spent decades challenging strong narratives in academic literature and popular media that argue that disasters result in conflict, including a breakdown in social order, panic, looting, and violence (Quarantelli 1954;Dynes and Quarantelli 1968;Quarantelli and Dynes 1976;Xu et al 2016;Brzoska 2018;Nogami 2018). This narrative manifests in numerous ways including claims that (1) hazard influencers such as climate change will incite war (challenged by Buhaug 2010) and mass migration (challenged by Baldwin et al 2019), and that (2) command-and-control approaches should be employed after a disaster to stop survivors from running rampant (challenged by Alexander 2020). Another major implication of the discourse that disasters cause conflict is that it securitizes disaster-related concerns (as deconstructed by Hartmann 2010 andNicholson 2014) and promotes topdown interventionist approaches to stymie the assumed ripple effects of instability (challenged by Alexander 2020).…”