Workshop "Beyond Climate Migration"
20 April 2017
International workshop organised by Sarah Nash, Christiane Fröhlich (both CLISEC) and Ethemcan Turhan, April 20-21.
Workshop abstract: Since the mid-2000s, a lively scholarship has emerged that links climate change with human mobility. Several points of consensus have emerged: That climate change and human mobility are related concepts, as climate change will have impacts on human mobility; that these relations are complex and mobility decisions will be multi-causal; that mobilities will be different, with people being affected differently. Nevertheless, ‘climate migration’ has become a field of research and policymaking alike. Frequently, complexities and interrelations are glossed over in contributions that continue to strengthen ‘climate migration’ as a concrete phenomenon.
The workshop ‘Beyond Climate Migration’ moved beyond ‘climate migration’ to critically engage with migration in a world increasingly more complex with multiple geopolitical and environmental challenges. The main goal of the workshop was to critically evaluate and engage with current practices in the field of ‘climate migration’ and with different constructions of space, as well as to develop a better understanding of intersectional differences and the social regulation of borders for people on the move. We also provided an interdisciplinary platform in which researchers and migration/development practitioners could exchange ideas not solely focusing on climate change-migration relations but on the broader phenomena of human mobility under major environmental and geopolitical transformations.
A video on the workshop is available here.