What
is the relationship between neoliberal imaginaries, discourses and
policy-making and the phenomenon of climate change-induced migration?
As
scholarly and policy debates about the relationship between climate
change and migration gather pace, very few scholars have sought to ask
how this relation might be understood within the
wider political economic context of neoliberalism. It is true that the
phenomenon of climate change and migration is often posed as a problem
of military security - the so-called migrant-as-threat thesis. However,
the discourse on climate change and migration
has undergone a significant transformation in recent years such that
migration is now widely understood to be also a legitimate form of
climate change adaptation rather than as purely a problem of
geopolitical security.
Interesting
in this respect is the way in which the phenomenon of climate change
and migration is now increasingly framed as a problem of human security
and economy, more so it seems, than
one of military security. For example, when migration is said to be a
legitimate form of climate change adaptation this is often justified in
terms of the benefits of remittance economies, access to labour markets,
circular migration, and risk management,
i.e. mobilising the lexicon and policy strategies that characterise
mainstream debates on migration in the last decade.
This
suggests that at a minimum the discourse on climate change and
migration is adopting the language of neoliberalism, but it also
suggests that this discursive shift may come with various
material effects, e.g. in terms of the institutions legitimated to
govern climate migration, of the policies to which prospect climate
migrant are subjected, of the forms of mobility fostered/curbed.
The
purpose of this workshop is thus to examine how neoliberalism, climate
change, and migration come together and with what sorts of effects.
The
workshop welcomes papers both with a theoretical and an empirical
focus. The workshop will take the form of keynote lectures, paper
presentations and roundtable discussions.
Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent to Giovanni Bettini
g.bettini@lancaster.ac.uk by
29nd June 2014.
Location: Lund University, Lund, Sweden
The workshop is organized by Working Group III (Theory) of the
COST Action IS1101
Climate change and migration: knowledge, law and policy, and theory.
