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"mobility justice"
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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.
Journal Article
Shifting responsibility and denying justice: New Zealand’s contentious approach to Pacific climate mobilities
Abstract It is increasingly evident that climate change is intersecting in complex ways with the more traditional drivers of migration, such as poverty and conflict. Yet there remains a startling lack of international agreement on how to address the issue. This article examines the problem climate change-related migration poses in terms of international responsibility and provides a review of two approaches to addressing this challenge. First, the idea that migration in the context of climate change requires the development of a new international protection agreement and, second, the argument that migration should be managed and mitigated through in situ adaptation and development programmes. These approaches differ in terms of how they understand the relationship between migration and climate change and thus differ also in terms of how they situate responsibility and address issues of climate justice. This paper explores these differences and outlines the benefits and challenges of both. Following this, we turn to the case of New Zealand’s immigration tribunal appeals involving claims for climate-refugee status and look at how in situ adaptation, development narratives and arbitrary risk thresholds have been used to legitimise the denial of these claims. Throughout the article, we ask to what extent these approaches acknowledge climate justice, and we conclude by looking at ways that climate (mobility) justice might be better incorporated into solutions that prioritise the needs of migrants in the context of rapid climate change.
Journal Article
Exploring the benefits and dis-benefits of climate migration as an adaptive strategy along the rural-peri-urban continuum in Namibia
The scale of climate migration across the Global South is expected to increase during this century. By 2050, millions of Africans are likely to consider, or be pushed into, migration because of climate hazards contributing to agricultural disruption, water and food scarcity, desertification, flooding, drought, coastal erosion, and heat waves. However, the migration-climate nexus is complex, as is the question of whether migration can be considered a climate change adaptation strategy across both the rural and urban space. Combining data from household surveys, key informant interviews, and secondary sources related to regional disaster, demographic, resource, and economic trends between 1990 and 2020 from north central and central dryland Namibia, we investigate (i) human migration flows and the influence of climate hazards on these flows and (ii) the benefits and dis-benefits of migration in supporting climate change adaptation, from the perspective of migrants (personal factors and intervening obstacles), areas of origin, and areas of destination. Our analysis suggests an increase in climate-related push factors that could be driving rural out-migration from the north central region to peri-urban settlements in the central region of the country. While push factors play a role in rural-urban migration, there are also several pull factors (many of which have been long-term drivers of urban migration) such as perceived higher wages, diversity of livelihoods, water, health and energy provisioning, remittances, better education opportunities, and the exchange of non-marketed products. Migration to peri-urban settlements can reduce some risks (e.g. loss of crops and income due to climate extremes) but amplify others (e.g. heat stress and insecure land tenure). Adaptation at both ends of the rural–urban continuum is supported by deeply embedded linkages in a model of circular rural–urban-rural migration and interdependencies. Results empirically inform current and future policy debates around climate mobilities in Namibia, with wider implications across Africa.
Journal Article
Attitudes towards climate migrants in Aotearoa New Zealand: the roles of climate change beliefs and immigration attitudes
Abstract As the effects of climate change begin to materialise across Pacific Island nations, many exposed communities are considering migrating away from their homelands. Migrants’ resettlement experiences can depend upon their reception in the host nation. However, it is unclear whether justice-based obligations will influence host attitudes toward climate migrants. Using an online survey of 238 Aotearoa New Zealanders, we explore how beliefs about anthropogenic climate change, climate justice and global responsibility contribute to public attitudes towards climate migrants. Overall, people thought more positively of immigrants in general than of climate migrants. Through moderated mediation analyses, we observed that people with stronger belief in anthropogenic climate change were more positive towards climate migrants. This pattern was related to people’s beliefs about climate justice and justice-based migration approaches. Findings suggest that host perceptions of climate migrants are connected to being aware of the ties between greenhouse gas emissions and migration. We outline anticipated challenges and potential opportunities for both migrant communities and the nations in which they seek refuge.
Journal Article
Putting climate-induced migration in context: the case of Honduran migration to the USA
Over the past decade, unauthorized migration from Honduras to the USA has become a topic of pressing international concern and a major factor in the political and humanitarian crisis at the southern border of the USA that has been unfolding since 2014. Untangling the causes of recent Honduran migration requires attending to economic change, political instability, the impact of violence and crime, rapidly changing gender roles, among many other forces that shape migration patterns. Recently, scholars and policy-makers have analyzed the impact of drought in the so-called Dry Corridor of Central America as a major source of migration, particularly among coffee producers who have been hard hit by unprecedented heat and lack of rain in parts of Honduras. Drawing on ethnographic studies of Honduran coffee farmers, this paper will discuss how and if climatic factors can be isolated from other factors to explain recent Honduran migration behavior, in order to move towards a holistic explanation of climate-driven migration.
Journal Article
(Climate) Migrants welcome? Evidence from a survey experiment in Austria
We study how economic, conflict, and environmental drivers of migration influence immigration acceptance in a receiving country. We carried out an online survey experiment in autumn 2015 with 686 student participants from the University of Innsbruck in Austria. In the survey experiment, respondents state their acceptance for a fictitious migrant from Chad where we vary the following causes of the migration decision: (1) violent conflicts, (2) environmental degradation due to global climate change, (3) environmental degradation due to local overuse, and (4) better economic prospects. We find that respondents support migrants who move because of climate change as much as conflict migrants. Acceptance is lowest for migrants who decide to leave for economic reasons, while it is slightly higher in the case of environmental degradation due to local overuse. Strikingly, a sizable share of respondents (25%) would even reject conflict migrants. Respondents who perceive a negative correlation between welfare, crime rates and job opportunities, and the presence of immigrants display lower immigration acceptance for all motives underlying the migration decision. In addition, we find heterogeneous effects depending on the respondents’ gender and political affiliation. Respondents with right-wing party preferences disclose lower acceptance levels for all causes except conflict. Female respondents are more accepting of climate migrants and less of economic migrants than men. This paper informs the debate around the ongoing political and societal polarization in Europe and elsewhere on the acceptance of different types of migrants.
Journal Article
The Role of Mobility Digital Ecosystems for Age-Friendly Urban Public Transport: A Narrative Literature Review
Within the context of the intersection of the global megatrends of urbanisation, ageing societies and digitalisation, this paper explores older people’s mobility, with a particular interest in public transport, and a strong consideration of digital/ICT elements. With a focus on (smart) mobility, the paper aims to conceptualise transport, one of the main domains of age-friendly cities as a core element of a smart, age-friendly ecosystem. It also aims to propose a justice-informed perspective for the study of age-friendly smart mobility; to contribute towards a framework for the evaluation of age-friendly smart transport as a core element of the global age-friendly cities programme that comprises mobility practices, digital data, digital networks, material/physical geographies and digital devices and access; and to introduce the term “mobility digital ecosystem” to describe this framework. The paper uses the method of a narrative literature review to weave together a selected range of perspectives from communications, transport, and mobility studies in order to introduce the embeddedness of both communication technology use and mobility practices into their material conditions. Combining insights from communications, mobility and transport and social gerontology with a justice perspective on ICT access and mobility, the paper then develops a framework to study age-friendly smart mobility. What we call a “mobility digital ecosystem” framework comprises five elements—mobility practices, digital data, digital networks, material geographies, digital devices and access to services. The paper contributes a justice-informed perspective that points towards a conceptualisation of age-friendly smart mobility as a core element of the age-friendly cities and communities in the WHO’s global age-friendly cities programme.
Journal Article
Towards a More Just Canadian Education-migration System: International Student Mobility in Crisis
Education-migration, or the multi-step recruitment and retention of international students as immigrants, is an increasingly important component of both higher education and so-called highly-skilled migration. This is particularly true in Canada, a country portrayed as a model for highly-skilled migration and supportive of international student mobility. However, education-migration remains under-analyzed from a social justice perspective. Using a mobility justice framework, this paper considers COVID-19’s impact on Canada’s education-migration system at four scales: individuals, education institutions, state immigration regimes, and planetary geoecologies. It identifies ethical tensions inherent to Canada’s education-migration from a systems-level and suggests that a multi-scalar approach to social justice can both usefully complexify discussions and introduce unsettling paradoxes. It also stresses that the COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to reimagine rather than return.
Journal Article
Sustainable Mobility and the Institutional Lock-In: The Example of Rural France
Sustainable mobility issues in rural areas, compared with urban mobility issues, have so far been poorly covered in the French and European public debate. However, local mobility issues are determining factors in territorial inequalities, regional development and ecological transition. This paper is based on preliminary findings of qualitative socio-anthropological fieldwork carried out in two rural departments of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region: Drôme and Ardèche. Our objective is to highlight how the question of sustainable local mobility is linked to governance issues and multiple overlapping institutions. We argue that analyzing stakeholders’ strategies and territorial governance is key to understanding the contemporary dynamics surrounding a transition towards a more sustainable mobility in rural areas. In order to do so, we show how the debates surrounding the adoption of a law allowing for the transfer of responsibility to local authorities for the organization of mobility services reveals the complexity of local mobility governance in rural areas and provides material for the analysis of the logics of stakeholder engagement, cooperation and conflict within the field of sustainable mobility. Through the case study of the organization of a local public transport service in a rural area, we shed light on the action of multiple stakeholders and their potentially antagonistic objectives.
Journal Article