Climate-Related Migration, Movement, and Mobility Flashcards
(28 cards)
McAdam and Felli comparison climate-related movement
Agreements:
- Language used for climate-related movement (CRM) not fixed or apolitical
- Climate-related movement isn’t monocausal but highly complex
– It must be understood in connection with other causal factors, especially economic ones
- How we conceptualize CRM affects who we think is responsible for responding to climate change
Disagreement:
- McAdam worries about robbing those affected by CRM of agency whereas Felli worries about those affected by CRM responsible for managing climate change on their own
How can applying different linguistic categories and concepts affect politicization of CRM? (McAdam and Felli, language used for climate-related movement not fixed or apolitical)
- Highlight different aspects of CRM
- Give different meanings of CRM
- Embed CRM with different normative values
- Suggest differential political responses to CRM
McAdam’s deflationary analysis of climate-related migration
- Major limits in what we can know about climate-related movement
- Major limits to applicability of existing refugee law to climate-related movement
McAdam’s limits to knowledge (CRM)
- Difficult to disentangle climatic drivers of migration from other drivers
- Difficult to accurately quantify climate-related movement
- Climate-related movement must be analyzed contextually
- Omissions in climate-related movement literature
Difficult to disentangle climatic drivers of migration from other drivers (McAdam’s limits to knowledge)
- Climate change is “threat multiplier” that exacerbates other factors that lead people to move
- Climate-related movement’s difficult to analyze because the causality behind it’s complex
Difficult to accurately quantify climate-related movement (McAdam’s limits to knowledge)
- CRM often bureaucratically uncounted (eg. not a visa option)
- CRM often domestic, therefore invisible and uncounted
- If climate change is a threat multiplier, it’s hard to correctly track CRM
- McAdam favors a “minimalist or skeptical” vs “maximalist or alarmist” approach
- Maximalist approaches may mean to helpfully draw attention to CRM, but can backfire when inaccurate (eg. UN 2005 prediction of 50 million climate refugees by 2010)
Climate-related movement must be analyzed contextually (McAdam’s limits to knowledge)
- Climatic factors interact with other, pre-existing patterns of movement and so must be understood in context
- eg. Pacific Island countries like Kiribati and Tuvalu interested in migration as a way to address non-climate challenges (eg. overcrowding, economic opportunity)
- This interest repackaged in light of climate change with climate framed as the only issue, but this has had negative fallout (eg. withdrawal of foreign aid, sense migration is only option)
Omissions in climate-related movement literature (McAdam’s limits to knowledge)
- Worst off might be unable to move, going un-studied and un-helped because they are stationary
- Focus on populations without access to robust migration pathways, but migration can still pose challenges even for those with more secure access (eg. disruptions to culture, identity)
Who is a refugee according to the 1951 Refugee Convention?
Refers to someone who “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it”
Why is applying the 1951 Refugee Convention to those moving in connection with climate change difficult?
- Applicable only to those who’ve crossed an international border
- But CRM can be and often is domestic
- Applicable only to those who’ve been persecuted (ie. discriminated against because of personal attribute)
- But with CRM it can be unclear who the persecutor is and that discrimination is at play
Climate refugee (McAdam) vs Climate migrant (Felli)
Climate refugee:
- Climate refugee indicative of passivity and helplessness?
- Implies movers are victims who can’t help themselves?
VS
Climate migrant:
- Climate migrant indicative of unfair burden shifting?
- Implies impacted individuals - not emitting countries - are responsible for navigating climate change themselves?
Climate refugee discourse paradigm (/characteristics)
- Highlighted impact of climate change on people
- Framed movers as victims of phenomenon they didn’t create
- Drew attention to failure of climate mitigation and adaptation policies
- Emphasized importance of protecting human rights and providing humanitarian aid for movers
Why was climate refugee replaced by climate migrant?
Replaced around mid-2000s by climate migrant paradigm as climate negotiations stalled and aims downshifted from mitigation to adaptation
Climate migrant paradigm (/characteristic)
Presents CRM not as evidence of failure to redress climate change but as a productive strategy for adapting to it
Felli from climate refugee to climate migrant
- Climate refugee paradigm positions movers as victims of an injustice who are owed a debt
- Underscores that climate movers are asked to bear cost of phenomenon they didn’t create and therefore implies that they should be made whole for this cost or repaid a debt (ie. deserve reparative justice)
- Climate migrant paradigm positions movers as entrepreneurs who’re individually responsible for themselves
- Frames adaptation not as collective, socio-political change that responds to altered external conditions but as the transformation of individuals into flexible go-getters who can respond to climate change themselves
Felli climate-related movement from justice to economic development
- Climate refugee paradigm suggests states have obligation to protect movers
- Locates climate movers in international law as bearers of formal rights guarantees
- Climate migrant paradigm suggests states must manage how migrants take responsibility for themselves
- Locates climate movers in deformalized governance norms and practices (eg. soft laws, capacity building techniques)
- Shift from legal protection and justice to informal management and economic development
Felli climate-related movement from rights bearers to laborers
- Goal of migrant management to sustain global capital accumulation
- Sustaining mass consumption in the North entails displacing environmental burdens onto the South and then managing these populations to be economically productive members of the global labor force
- Climate change creates outsized material insecurity in the South that is then managed to capital’s benefit
- Peripheral populations managed largely by international organizations via top-down, politically unresponsive governance mechanisms (eg. expertise, best practices, evaluations)
- Integrating peripheral populations into the global economy in this way is a form of “primitive accumulation”
- Migration management generally, and climate migration management in particular, are forms of primitive accumulation
- In context of climate migration, those made insecure by impact of climate change are turned into productive wage laborers
What is primitive accumulation?
An ongoing process of making people into laborers by keeping them separate from means of production so that to survive they must work for a wage
Felli disempowered migrants in the labor market
- International labor migration management
– Isn’t benign or neutral
– Doesn’t safeguard freedom of self-determination
– Is organized to facilitate capital accumulation - Migration managed to align with employers’ interests more than workers’ interests
- Migrant labor is made vulnerable and insecure
How is migrant labor made vulnerable and insecure? (Felli disempowered migrants in the labor market)
- Temporary and circular migration schemes
- Deprivation of basic rights (eg. rights of citizenship, freedom of association, rights to organize)
- Linkage of migrant permits to specific business makes quitting for alternative employment or better treatment hard
- Mistreatment of recruitment agencies
- Poor working conditions
- Reduced access to social safety net provisions
What is ecobordering according to Turner & Bailey?
- Frames:
– immigration as a threat to the environment
– Treats borders as environmental protection - Shifts blame for environmental degradation from economic structures to migrants
- Confuses effect (migration) with cause (environmental harm)
- Absolves Global North of environmental responsibility
- Enables ongoing environmental harm by capitalism
How do far-right European parties use ecobordering discourse?
Shift from climate change denial to using environmental issues to promote far-right agendas
Portray migrants as threats to environmental sustainability
Claim migration causes overpopulation and resource strain
Argue that national populations deserve resources more due to historical ties to land
Example: Swiss People’s Party blames immigration for increases in cars, power use, and water consumption
How does ecobordering discourse connect to Malthusianism?
Frames environmental degradation as too many people using too few resources
Solution becomes reducing population rather than changing economic practices
Supports restrictive immigration policies to “curb overpopulation”
What is Malthusianism and how is it applied in ecobordering?
Population grows geometrically (e.g., 1, 2, 4, 8)
Resources grow arithmetically (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4)
Leads to cycles of scarcity, suffering, and rebalancing
Poor are blamed and expected to reduce reproduction
Used to justify cutting welfare and promoting self-restraint through religious teaching
