8th EUGEO CONGRESS ON THE GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE
June 28 – July 1, 2021, Prague, Czechia
Call for paper for the session:
Migration and climate: a fallacious relationship
Session supported by the IGU Commission of Political Geography
Organizers:
Anna Casaglia (University of Trento); Jussi Laine (University of Eastern Finland)
Land erosion, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, floods and drought, and other increasingly frequent and extreme climatic phenomena are radically transforming people’s relation with the environment. The present climate scenario is often framed, at the political level, as a security issue. At the European level, attention has been particularly paid on climate change’s presumed primary or secondary outcomes, such as geopolitical instability, armed conflict, or environmental migration.
The connection between climate change and human migration is often understood in relatively narrow terms. Several studies have put into discussion the correlation between climate change and conflicts (Selby J. et al, 2017; Barnett, J., Adger, W.N. 2007; Raleigh, C., Urdal, H. 2007) as well as between climate change and migration from poor countries (Abel G.J. et al. 2019; Reuveny, R. 2007). However, the general assumption is that the climate crisis is directly causing the movement of people from the Global South to the Global North, and the mainstream understanding of climate security insists on underlining the threats posed by environmental degradation to either territorial integrity, human security, or international stability (McDonald 2013) .
The identification of climate migration as a security threat is part of a discourse that concentrates on state security and identifies possible responses in the securitization of borders and mitigation strategies. Among other dangerous effects, taking into account migration as a direct outcome of climate change means avoiding facing its root causes and denying the geopolitical relations of power and colonialism (past and present) that have configured the landscape of the global South. This perspective, on the other hand, allows escaping the responsibility to adopt measures to reduce fossil fuel consumption and decrease emissions (Dalby 2009).
With this panel, we seek to gather presentations critically discussing so-called “climate migration”, both in relation to the actual causes of mobility in the first place, and to the lack of proper political responses by the EU in dealing with the consequences of the climate crisis. Moreover, we aim at promoting a reflection on the dangerous outcomes of the process of securitization of both environmental degradation and global migration, especially in their interweaving.
We invite submissions of papers that include, but are not limited to, the following topics:
– The critique of predominant assumptions of causality between the climate crisis and global migration
– The diverse and coexisting mobility responses to climate change
– The political nature of climate injustice
– The colonial genealogy of the climate crisis and related forced mobility
– European responses to global migration and the so-called climate migration
Selected works from the session will be invited to submit an extended version of their accepted paper to a post-conference special issue in a top-tier international journal. This call is also open to authors that could not participate in the conference, provided the paper fits within the scope of this special issue and that an extended abstract of the paper has been approved by the guest editors. More information is to follow.
Abstract submission deadline: 31 January 2021
To submit your abstract: https://www.eugeo2021.eu/
For any information on the session: anna.casaglia@unitn.it and/or jussi.laine@uef.fi