Lecture 7 Flashcards
Migration
Agreements McAdam and Felli
- Agreement: language used for climate related movement CRM isn’t fixed or apolitical
- Applying different linguistic concepts and categories will
o Highlight different aspects of CRM.
o Give different meanings to CRM.
o Embed CRM with different normative values.
o Suggest different political responses to CRM. - Agreement: climate related movement isn’t monocausal but highly complex.
- It must be understood in connection with other causal factors, especially economic ones (e.g., poverty, labor, opportunity).
- Agreement: how we conceptualize CRM affects who we think is responsible for responding to climate change.
Disagreement McAdam and Felli
- Disagreement: McAdam worries about robbing those affected by CRM of agency whereas Felli worries about making those affected by CRM responsible for managing climate change on their own.
McAdams deflationary analysis
Think in limits
- Major limits to what we can know about climate-related movement.
- Major limits to applicability of existing refugee law to climate-related movement.
Difficult to disentangle climatic drivers of migration from other drivers - limits to knowledge
o Climate change is threat multiplier that exacerbates other factors that lead people to move.
o Climate-related movement’s difficult to analyze because the causality behind it’s complex.
Difficult to accurately quantify climate-related movement - limits to knowledge
o CRM often bureaucratically uncounted (not a visa option).
o CRM is often domestic, therefore invisible and untracked.
o If climate change is a threat multiplier, it’s hard to correctly track CRM.
o McAdam favors a minimalist or skeptical approach vs a maximalist or alarmist approach.
o Maximalist approaches may mean to helpfully draw attention to CRM, but can backfire when inaccurate.
Climate related movement must be analyzed contextually - limits to knowledge
o Climate factors interact with other, pre-existing patterns of movement and so must be understood in context. See Tuvalu and Kiribati examples
o This interest has repackaged in light of climate change with climate framed as the only issue, but this has had negative fallout (withdrawal of foreign aid -> migration only option).
Omissions in climate-related movement - limits to knowledge
o Worst off might be unable to move, going un-studied and un-helped because they are stationary.
o Focus on populations without access to robust migration pathways, but migration can still pose challenges even for those with more secure access (disruptions to culture or identity).
McAdams limits to refugee law
- In 1951 refugee convention and later protocols “insert quote”
- Difficult to apply to those moving in connection with climate change
o Applicable only to those who’ve crossed an international border.
o But CRM can be and often is domestic.
o Applicable only to those who’ve been persecuted (discriminated against because of personal attribute).
o But with CRM it can be unclear a) who persecutor is b) that discrimination is at play.
A battle of words
- Climate refugee is indicative of passivity and helplessness. It implies movers are victims who can’t help themselves. [McAdams]
- Climate migrant is indicative of unfair burden shifting. It implies impacted individuals -not emitting countries- are responsible for navigating climate change themselves. [Felli]
Climate refugee paradigm
o Highlighted impact of climate change on people.
o Framed movers as victims of phenomenon they didn’t create.
o Drew attention to failure of climate mitigation and adaptation policies.
o Emphasized importance of protecting human rights of and providing humanitarian aid for movers.
Why did the climate refugee paradigm got replaced
- Replaced around mid-2000s by climate paradigm as a) climate negotiations stalled and b) aims downshifted from mitigation to adaptation.
Climate migrant paradigm
o Presents CRM not as evidence of failure to redress climate change but as a productive strategy for adapting to it.
Felli: from victims to entrepreneurs
- Climate refugee paradigm positions movers as victims of an injustice who are owed a debt.
- Underscores that climate movers are asked to bear cost of phenomenon they didn’t create and therefore implies that they should be made whole for this cost or repaid a debt (i.e., deserve reparative justice).
- Climate migrant paradigm positions movers as entrepreneurs who’re individually responsible for themselves.
- Frames adaptation not as collective, socio-political change that responds to altered external conditions but as the transformation of individuals into flexible go-getters who can respond to climate change themselves.
Felli: from justice to economic development
- Climate refugee paradigm suggests states have obligation to protect movers.
- Locates climate movers in international law as bearers of formal rights guarantees.
- Climate migrant paradigm suggests states must manage how migrants take responsibility for themselves.
- Locates climate movers in deformalized governance norms and practices (e.g., soft laws, capacity building techniques).
- Shift from legal protection and justice to informal management and economic development.
Felli: from rights bearers to laborers
- Goal of migrant management is to sustain global capital accumulation.
- Sustaining mass consumption in the North entails displacing environmental burdens onto the South and then managing these populations to be economically productive members of the global labor force.
- Climate change creates outsized material insecurity in the South that is then managed to capital’s benefit.
