Giovanni Bettini

Climate migration as an adaption strategy: de-securitizing climate-induced migration or making the unruly governable?

In the past, the debate on climate-induced migration (CM) was absorbed by the discussion for or against the figure of ‘climate refugees’. Alarmist tones often drawing on a security lexicon were prevalent in media and policy circuits, although fiercely contested by critical scholars. Recently, a mundane register characterized by milder tones has become prevalent. The focus on forced migration (as for climate refugees) has given way to the idea that migration can also represent an adaptation strategy. The security lexicon has been replaced by human security, resilience and adaptation. After detailing this profound shift, this article warns against the idea that it marks a ‘democratization’ of the debate. A closer look at the role of human security, resilience and adaptation reveals how the new register (similarly to the old one) is functional to imprinting biopolitical subjectivities onto the concerned populations and to inscribe their life into existing neoliberal relations. While the old register individuated and pathologized the sources of bad circulation (climate refugees), the new register aims at fostering individuals able to sustain good circulation and economic development (resilient migrant). I conclude that the shift of register does not imply an opening for more democratic approaches to CM.

Waltz with development: insights on the developmentalization of climate-induced migration

The idea of migration as an adaptation strategy has gained traction in the debates on climate change and mobility. It emphasises migrants’(economic) agency and praises remittances as source of funding for household and community resilience. The environmental determinism of the previously dominant narratives on ‘climate refugees’ gives way to more accurate understanding of how environmental conditions interact with migration processes, thereby facilitating a convinced engagement by the migration and development communities. This article interrogates the discourses on migration as adaptation through the long-standing ‘migration and development’ debates. We show that, despite their aura of novelty within climate policy, the ‘new’ discourses build on ‘old’ foundations – i.e. the optimistic swings of the “migration anddevelopment pendulum” (de Haas 2012). Moreover, the ‘migration as adaptation’ thesis has not come with a deeper engagement with the structural inequalities that (re)produce socio-ecological vulnerabilities, impeding the mobility of some while forcing others into displacement. Rather, it mirrors the neoliberal version of the classical optimist take on the migration-development nexus, through which mainstream international agendas have tried to foster development and discipline mobility in the last few decades. The extent to which this proves a positive turn in climate (migration) policy is up to debate.

Sand Waves and Human Tides: Exploring Environmental Myths on Desertification and Climate-Induced Migration

In spite of the growing attention to climate-induced migration, a coherent understanding of the matter is lacking—as any articulated governance strategy. Although such an impasse relates to the unprecedented socioecological processes involved, we argue that many of the challenges posed by climate-induced migration are not unique in the history of global environmental governance. Proceeding from this, we compare climate migration with the issue of desertification. Drawing upon the concept of environmental myth developed in Political Ecology, we identify common themes such as scientism, vagueness, and ambiguities in the definitions, and a tendency to envision one-fits-all solutions that overlook the multiscalar phenomena involved. We discuss how these traits have contributed to the failure of the desertification regime. Consequently, we propose that climate migration debates should move beyond such deficiencies, to avoid the consolidation of policy responses reproducing the same problems that have characterized the regime on desertification.

Where Next? : Climate Change, Migration, and the (Bio)politics of Adaptation

The series of recent hecatombs in the Mediterranean, together with the regressive reactions we have witnessed in and around Europe, highlight the importance of posing the question of climate change and migration. Climate change will interact with a number of drivers of migration, and will hit hardest on the weakest and most exposed – which often include migrants as well as those too poor to move. However, how the climate-migration nexus can be addressed in fair and equitable ways (with what concepts, in what fora, through what policies) is far from a simple question. This intervention proposes two main arguments. First, a brief overview of recent debates suggests that we are still far from any progressive approaches to ‘climate migration’ – those that have emerged are different expressions of biopolitical discourses on sustainable development and resilience. Second, this intervention invites to reconsider the widely held and depoliticising assumption that climate migration is a ‘problem to be solved’ - for instance, by UNFCCC. Rather, the nexus should be seen as a set of open questions on different alternative climate futures, as well as a symptom of the irreducibly political tensions inherent in every form of mobility as much as in every attempt to discipline/govern it.

‘Floods’ of migrants, flows of care : Between climate displacement and global care chains

This article explores the growing interface between climate-induced mobilities and participation in ‘global care chains’ under conditions in which climate change is already impacting on lives and livelihoods – especially in the Global South. The authors reconsider discourses on ‘climate migration’ in the light of everyday caring practices and adaptive responses to climate stress, evaluating how climate policy interferes with ‘grassroots’ flows of care. Early engagements tended towards alarmist predictions of mass climate-induced displacement, triggering proposals to ‘secure’ potential host nations against anticipated influxes. Recently, apparently more sober approaches have emerged, promoting labour migration as contributing positively to climate ‘resilience’. These new approaches encourage more able and resourceful people from under-resourced, climate-vulnerable regions to join trans-local or transnational labour markets – which often equates with predominantly female care workers entering global care chains. Effectively, this means that those best equipped to provide care in places where it is most urgently needed end up providing care in relatively privileged, less climate-vulnerable places. Questioning the climate justice implications of this mobilization against the gradient of vulnerability, the authors offer suggestions about how climate policy could actually support caring practices in the places where ordinary people struggle at the sharp edge of climate change.