Tracking local and regional climate im/mobilities through a multidimensional lens

Abstract

Recent scholarship on climate mobilities and mobility justice calls for dynamic, relational, and agent-centered approaches to comprehend the complex decision-making that compels certain people to leave the places they call home, encourages or forces others to stay put, and acknowledges those who engage with mobile populations in host countries. Yet, these efforts fall short of advancing a coherent conceptual framework to make sense of the multifaceted, subjective, and affective aspects of climate-related movements and deliver more inclusive research agendas in the context of regional environmental change. This article aims to address this gap by introducing a multidimensional visual heuristic that we call the im/mobility cube. This framework makes it possible to systematically examine relational and intersectional struggles of mobility and (dis)placement, along three interconnected axes: the lived experiences of moving, remaining in place, and receiving mobile subjects upon arrival; the role of climate change as part of a complex web of drivers; and the consequences that mobility and immobility have on people’s lives, livelihoods, and well-being, from desirable benefits to intolerable losses. This heuristic foregrounds the embodied inequalities and often intimate kinopolitical struggles that im/mobile populations face, at the juncture of their aspirations and capabilities, complex subject-making processes, and ever shifting relations of power. As such, our conceptual lens sharpens the focus on the simultaneity and linkages of climate-driven im/mobility encounters within regional contexts and their diverse and courageous protagonists.

Investigating the conditions of vulnerability experienced by migrant workers during the COVID‐19 pandemic in Kerala, India

“…This storytelling methodology was designed to be open‐ended and permitted the participants to shape the narratives and stories they told and to express their position in the complex socio‐material assemblages which condition, restrict, and motivate their choices and behaviour at different junctures (Bell, 2010; Ali, 2014): the stories offered methodological windows on to the subjective space (Ayeb‐Karlsson, 2021). Overall, the storytelling research approach allowed us to understand and describe how power relations influenced decision‐making relating to mobility, risk perception, and well‐being (Tschakert and Neef, 2022). Given that each paper already had a thematically specific set of data allocated to it by those who collected and analysed the data initially, spanning around 20 pages of quotes and notes, a basic coding process was applied to draw out key sub‐themes that spoke to different power relations and contexts (such as gender and type of work setting), different types of problems and suffering (such as harassment, entrapment, boredom, and health issues), and different temporal contexts (before, during, and after the first lockdown period).…”

Two faces of vulnerability: Distinguishing susceptibility to harm and system resilience in climate adaptation

“…This intuitive disconnect constitutes an expression of Naylor et al's (2020) understanding of vulnerability in terms of the sensitivity to the interaction of systems. Further, while migration has the potential for great benefit, it also risks exacerbating power inequalities and making individuals susceptible to a range of harms (Tschakert & Neef, 2022). A similar effect is seen when what had been familiar is no longer so.…”

Beyond the Binary of Trapped Populations and Voluntary Immobility: A People-Centered Perspective on Environmental Change and Human Immobility at Lake Urmia, Iran

“…Our investigation therefore takes the aspirations-capabilities framework as a starting point and complements it with insights from other contemporary concepts and theories that allow for a multidimensional analysis of the meanings and consequences of staying processes through the stories and lived experiences of those wrapped up in them (cf. Tschakert and Neef, 2022). In adopting an 'environmental and climate mobilities' perspective (Beine et al, 2019;Wiegel et al, 2019), we acknowledge the relationality and diversity of (im)mobilities.…”

“…We also consider the potential adverse impacts of others' mobility (e.g., high rates of out-migration) on the lives and wellbeing of those who remain. Exploring these losses reveals the subjective and place-specific experiences of loss and grief, which are often not measurable, but can significantly influence residents' sense of place and shape their (im)mobility aspirations (Tschakert and Neef, 2022). While the consequences of loss of place have been rather absent in environmental (im)mobility research, they are studied in environmental psychology within the concepts of solastalgia and ecological grief (Albrecht et al, 2007;Comtesse et al, 2021).…”