Pluralising the climate change-migration nexus: explorations of environmental im/mobilities, perceptions and politics

Abstract

Evolving debates around the relationship between climate change and migrationAcademic and policy debates about the relation between climate change and human migration are usually dated back to 1985. Although the environment figured as a potential push and/or pull factor in the earliest migration theories by e.g. Ratzel, Ravenstein or Huntington (see Piguet, 2013), it essentially disappeared from migration studies around the mid-20 th century -until the concept of 'environmental refugees' was coined in a report by El-Hinnawi (1985) for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). This and two other high-level policy reports published between 1985 and 1990 are typically credited with (re-)initiating the debates about the links between global warming, climate change, displacement and migration (Piguet, 2013). In academia, this was picked up quickly particularly by environmental scientists. Academic discussions around 'environmental refugees' and later 'climate refugees' sought to highlight the gravity of climate change by referring to its severe implications for vulnerable populations (for a critical overview, see e.g. Bettini, 2013;Gemenne, 2011b;Klepp, 2017). This first wave of 'climate refugee' research was mostly concerned with modelling future displacements and numerical projections, the most famous and persistent of which is Myers' forecast of 200 million climate refugees by 2050 (Myers, 2002;Myers & Kent, 1995).This chapter outlines the conceptual starting point of the thesis, i.e. why and how the mobilities perspective can contribute to our understanding of the climate change-migration nexus. It has been