No abstract

In recent decades, there has been a shift in the climate‐migration discourse: from one preoccupied with ‘climate refugees’ to one of ‘migration as adaptation’. Academics and policy‐makers alike see migration as a way to generate income, diversify livelihoods, and spread risk in the face of climate change. Past literature has found that policy prescriptions at this nexus may play into existing politics and framings, especially in the struggle for funding or in the age of the ever‐present neoliberal agenda. This paper makes the case that perhaps the machinations behind policy recommendations need not appear to be sinister. While higher‐level structural considerations should be taken into account and doubtless undergird the trajectory of policy‐making, organisations often follow existing pathways neither because of empirical evidence nor with malicious intent, but rather because it is part and parcel of existing practices of positioning themselves within the system and playing the rules of the game. In fact, every‐day and seemingly mundane practices can accumulate and ‘hang together’ to shape and determine policy outcomes. This happens in a variety of ways in the field of ‘migration as adaptation’, but in its most explicit form can be unveiled in the organisational practices of writing publications and participating in conferences and working groups, for example. By using a practice‐oriented approach, with Bourdieu's ‘Theory of Practice’ as a guide, this paper provides an understanding of the logic and practices of the migration‐as‐adaptation policy sphere and the limited policy prescriptions related to it as well as suggests sites at which to target interventions for more radical policy imaginings.

Climate change adaptation (CCA) 'barriers' are frequently seen as responses to biophysical climate impacts, and thus defined as 'obstacles' to be 'overcome', rendered into categories of the technomanagerial. However, barriers are often undertheorized and are blind to explanations of their origins or the causal mechanisms by which they operate. This is especially complex for barrier critiques in the Global South in particular. Using a 'hybrid' assemblage and postcolonial approach, this paper disentangles existing barrier critiques in Thailand to lay bare underlying power imbalances and tensions. It finds that 'simplistic' vulnerability framings have deep roots in postcolonial histories; 'complacent' mainstreaming/budgeting trajectories have been nurtured by various IOs, and not necessarily much-maligned Thai bureaucrats; and limited technical expertise/willingness to engage are not so illogical, but rather results of diverse external forces. Given this, this paper urges institutional actors and researchers to reflect on epistemology, ontology, and their own positionality when assessing barriers in future.

No abstract