Simon Behrman

Climate Refugees: Beyond the Legal Impasse?

Current estimates of the numbers of people who will be forced from their homes as a result of climate change by the middle of the century range from 50 to 200 million. Therefore, even the most optimistic projections envisage a crisis of migration that will dwarf any we have seen so far. And yet attempts to develop legal mechanisms to deal with this impending crisis have reached an impasse that shows little sign of being overcome. This is in spite of the rapidly growing academic study and policy development in the area of climate change generally. Climate Refugees: Beyond the Legal Impasse? will address a fundamental gap in academic literature and policy making; namely the legal ‘no-man’s land’ in which the issue of climate refugees currently resides. Past proposals for the regulation of climate-induced migration are evaluated, inter alia by their original authors, and the volume also looksat the current attempts to regulate climate-induced migration, including by officials from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Platform on Displacement Disaster (DPP). Bringing together experts from a variety of academic fields, as well as officials from leading international organisations, this book will be of great interest to students and researchers of Environmental Law, Refugee Law, Human Rights Law, Environmental Studies and International Relations.

Migration and Neoliberalism: Creating Spaces of Resistance

Anne McNevin’s book provides a valuable contribution to ongoing debates about the plight of irregular migrants in the context of neoliberal hegemony. It combines detailed analysis of contemporary movements that resist the ever-increasing controls over borders and movement, together with critical assessments of a range of contemporary theorists on the question. McNevin’s central argument is that neoliberalism not only delineates the migrant subject in various ways, but also traps activists into replicating many harmful assumptions about ‘deserving’ versus ‘undeserving’ migrants. She further argues for a resurrection of the political subjectivity of migrant communities, by both exploiting the crisis engendered at the nexus of neoliberal economics and the sovereign subject, and resisting the framework set by those paradigms.