Accelerating climate change is widely predicted to have profound impacts on human mobility over the coming decades. Climate mobilities and immobilities invoke issues of justice and social inequality and pose numerous socio-cultural, health, economic, legal and political challenges. Current international legal frameworks and national governance mechanisms provide insufficient protection for people displaced by climate change who are often subjected to health risks, psychosocial trauma, human rights abuse, and even new climatic risks. At the same time, there is a need to better understand how climate change interacts with other mobility drivers and why many climate-affected people decide to stay put or remain trapped in at-risk locations. Drawing on a wide range of disciplinary traditions and featuring Indigenous voices and youth perspectives, this book introduces new conceptual frameworks and empirical studies to examine the unique challenges facing people on the move and those staying behind.

Accelerating climate change is widely predicted to have profound impacts on human mobility over the coming decades. Climate mobilities and immobilities invoke issues of justice and social inequality and pose numerous socio-cultural, health, economic, legal and political challenges. Current international legal frameworks and national governance mechanisms provide insufficient protection for people displaced by climate change who are often subjected to health risks, psychosocial trauma, human rights abuse, and even new climatic risks. At the same time, there is a need to better understand how climate change interacts with other mobility drivers and why many climate-affected people decide to stay put or remain trapped in at-risk locations. Drawing on a wide range of disciplinary traditions and featuring Indigenous voices and youth perspectives, this book introduces new conceptual frameworks and empirical studies to examine the unique challenges facing people on the move and those staying behind.

The first comprehensive review of the interaction between climate change and migration; for advanced students, researchers and policy makers.

This book addresses environmental and climate change induced migration from the vantage point of migration studies, offering a broad spectrum of approaches for considering the environment/climate/migration nexus. Research on the subject is still frequently narrowed down to climate change vulnerability and the environmental push factor. The book establishes the interconnections between societal and environmental vulnerability, and migration and capability, allowing appreciation of migration in the frame of climate as a case of spatial and social mobility, that is, as a strategy of persons and groups to deal with a grossly unequal distribution of life chances across the world. In their introduction, the editors fan out the current debate and state the need to transcend predominantly policy-oriented approaches to migration. The first section of the volume focuses on “Methodologies and Methods” and presents very distinct approaches to think climate induced migration. Subsequent chapters explore the sensitivity of existing migration flows to climate change in Ghana and Bangladesh, the complex relationship between migration, demographic change and coping capacities in Canada, methodological challenges of a household survey on the significance of migration and remittances for adaptation in the Hindu Kush region and an econometric study of the aftermath of the 1998 floods in Bangladesh. The second part, “Areas of Concern: Politics and Human Rights”, deepens the analysis of discourses as well as of the implications of proposed and implemented policies. Contributors discuss such topics as environmental migration as a multi-causal problem, climate migration as a consequence in an alarmist discourse and climate migration as a solution. A study of an integrated relocation program in Papua New Guinea is followed by chapters on the promise and the flaws of planned relocation policy, global policy on protection of environmental migrants including both internally displaced peoples and those who cross international borders. A concluding chapter places human agency at centre stage and explores the interplay between human rights, capability and migration.

This open access book studies the migration aspirations and trajectories of people living in two regions in Morocco that are highly affected by environmental change or emigration, namely Tangier and Tinghir, as well as the migration trajectories of immigrants coming from these regions currently living in Belgium. This book departs from the development of a new theoretical framework on the relationship between environmental changes and migration that can be applied to the Moroccan case. Qualitative research conducted in both countries demonstrate how the interplay between migration and environmental factors is not as straightforward as it seems, due to its wider social, political, economic, demographic and environmental context. Findings show how existing cultures of migration, remittances, views on nature and discourses on climate change create distinct abilities, capacities and aspirations to migrate due to environmental changes. The results illustrate how migration and environmental factors evolve gradually and mutually influence each other. In doing so, this book offers new insights in the ways migration can be seen as an adaptation strategy to deal with environmental change in Morocco.

Giulia Parola’s Environmental Democracy at the Global Level: Rights and Duties for a New Citizenship can be seen as a manifesto that is both traditional and revolutionary at the same time. It calls for the construction of a new civilisation centred on the environment, while drawing on the traditional notions of democratic government. It adopts an approach that is focused on the power of individuals rather than governments, as ways to protect and improve the environment. It proposes that environmental rights and ecological duties are self-evident and inalienable, and should be treated as the cornerstones of a new democracy. Parola’s book is a thought provoking and intriguing work that will be of interest to scholars of environmental studies as well as to legal practitioners and non-specialists. Giulia Parola has studied Environmental Law at the University of Torino, at the University of René Descartes in Paris, (where she obtained PhD in Public Law) and at the University of Iceland ( LLM in Natural Resources Law and International Environmental Law). In 2011, she was appointed by the University of Laval (Canada, Quebec) as a researcher and a lecturer in Environmental Law.

Cities are defined by their complex network of busy streets and the multitudes of people that animate them through physical presence and bodily actions that often differ dramatically: elegant window-shoppers and homeless beggars, protesting crowds and patrolling police. As bodies shape city life, so the city’s spaces, structures, economies, politics, rhythms, and atmospheres reciprocally shape the urban soma. This collection of original essays explores the somaesthetic qualities and challenges of city life (in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas) from a variety of perspectives ranging from philosophy, urban theory, political theory, and gender studies to visual art, criminology, and the interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics. Together these essays illustrate the aesthetic, cultural, and political roles and trials of bodies in the city streets.