Climate mobilities, rights and justice: Complexities and particularities

Abstract

Climate mobility revolves around issues of justice and human rights, whether this be concerning its causes, expression or handling. This paper examines the justice-rights nexus as it relates to climate mobility, highlighting how the two spheres converge and diverge. It works with four case studies exploring the complexity of rights and justice in the climate mobility context. Our case studies are diverse, in terms of the mobility types concerned and the rights and justice-based issues involved. We show that conceptualizing or achieving just or righteous outcomes is neither certain nor a uniform pursuit when it comes to climate mobility. Rather, there are many divergences–by those who claim rights or justice, and those asked to respond. We present a complex and contested space, highlight the importance of approaching justice and rights matters contextually, and with special attention to particularities when climate mobility is at issue.

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

“…This raises important questions about the rationales of 'climate buffer' projects, and their assumptions about which areas are considered as more expendable than others in case of flooding, and which lives and livelihoods are more worthy of protection. Applying this justice angle to issues of displacement, relocation and involuntary immobilities, for example through mobility justice (see Farbotko, Thornton, Mayrhofer & Hermann, 2022;Sheller, 2018b) "invites us to think critically about how the rights to dwell and the rights to move of those most affected by climate change are protected and addressed [… by climate governance] especially since they often are part of those populations who have least contributed to climate change themselves" (Boas et al, 2022, p. 8).…”

“…Furthermore, such an approach might help to overcome the oscillation between nuance and urgency within critical research on the climate change-migration nexus, as discussed above: Explicitly multiscalar research approaches provide pathways of analysis that allow for nuanced accounts of local-level dynamics, while also paying attention to their embeddedness in power relations playing out beyond the case-study level -and which are often more important for affecting change than addressing specific problems at a local level (Natarajan et al, 2019;Porst & Sakdapolrak, 2018;Radel et al, 2018). As such, the insights from this thesis could provide helpful pointers for advancing the current debates on topics such as resettlement, habitability and climate or mobility justice (Farbotko, 2018;Farbotko et al, 2022;Horton et al, 2021).…”

“…Other important contributions of environmental mobilities studies are the growing understanding of how human im/mobilities intersect with, or are shaped by, those of communication technology, risks, viruses, animal mobilities (Boas, 2022;Zickgraf, 2018bZickgraf, , 2022 as well as that of ideas and discourse (Durand-Delacre, 2022a, 2022b. Recent studies on climate migration regimes Farbotko, 2022) and mobility justice (Blondin, 2022;Farbotko et al, 2022;Sheller, 2018b) have contributed particularly to contextualising "empirical results within larger sets of power relations and governance" (Piguet, 2022, p. 10).…”

“…While such black-and-white depictions tend to speak to the preferences of research funders, advocacy NGOs and governance institutions , the historical experience with the concept of 'climate refugees' has shown how such discourse can easily be turned from a call for awareness into a securitised narrative (see Bettini, 2013;Durand-Delacre et al, 2021;Methmann & Oels, 2015). This can hinder the conceptual and practical advancement of current debates in this field, such as resettlement and planned relocation due diminished habitability in the context of climate change (Farbotko et al, 2020;Gemenne, Zickgraf, Leigh & Castillo Betancourt, 2021;Horton, de Sherbinin, Wrathall & Oppenheimer, 2021), as well as climate and mobility justice (Bettini et al, 2017;Farbotko et al, 2022;Klepp & Herbeck, 2016;Sheller, 2018b). Based on the insights from this thesis and the development of the research field over the past years, I would argue that for more holistic insights into the climate-change migration nexus, attention to the injustices of climate change and climate mobility regimes should be actively combined with grounded and nuanced research that brings local perspectives into the conversation.…”

“…While thus gaining international traction, reflected in the inclusion of this approach in the 2022 Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2022), also this more 'optimistic' perspective on migration as climate change adaptation has been criticised on several points. For example, it is considered as downplaying the potential negative consequences of migration, such as dislocation of families and communities, as well as loss of social and cultural ties (see Durand-Delacre, 2022a;Farbotko et al, 2022). Furthermore, the image of labour migrants as agents of climate change adaptation often does not match empirical insights, which show that simplistic assumptions about remittances decreasing local vulnerabilities tend to neglect complex local realities, including power inequalities within communities (Bettini, 2017;Sakdapolrak, Borderon & Sterly, 2023).…”