Abstract
The study of the relationship between environmental change and human mobility has largely focused on the movement of people as it is driven by environmental change with little regard for those who stay when faced with many of the same adverse conditions. An emerging body of work recognizes and seeks to understand the lack of migration, or immobility, in the contexts of environmental and climatic change, primarily through the notion of “trapped populations.” Theoretically, however, our understandings of immobility in relation to environmental change are underdeveloped and oversimplified, and do not do justice to the diversity, dynamism, or unevenness of (im)mobilities. In order to advance knowledge, this paper connects knowledge from environmental migration studies to immobility in broader migration research. Although there is no silver theoretical bullet, it explores the strengths and weaknesses of three frameworks in explaining and understanding (im)mobility decision-making, patterns, and consequences: (1) the New Economics of Labour Migration; (2) the aspirations-(cap)abilities framework; and (3) the mobilities paradigm. In order to break away from both sedentary and mobility biases, it asserts that scholars should theorize and analyze the entire mobility spectrum in the face of environmental change, rather than considering immobility as a separate outcome.
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Notes
A sedentary bias fuels governance aimed at stopping migration through the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, funding for adaptation efforts and development in communities of origin rather than in destinations, and restrictive migration policies.
Most research focuses on immobility in areas of origin and not immobility “on the move,” e.g., when do people stop migrating, settle, or become “trapped in transit.” This is an important gap in the literature.
For more on the frequency and usage of trapped populations, see Ayeb-Karlsson et al. (2018).
Milan and Ruano (2014) distinguish between entire household migration and the migration of one member within the household.
Carling (2002) does touch upon refugee contexts such as conflict, noting that the problem of involuntary immobility is likely to be particularly acute in these cases.
Although scholars debate whether or not mobilities is indeed a paradigm.
An example of this is the TransRe project, which elaborated on translocal social resilience in Thailand, by interrogating how migration-induced intensifying translocal relations alter the environment and the capacity to deal with environmental changes in the places of origin of migrants.
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The author acknowledges the support of the editors of the Special Issue and wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback in the publication process. Lastly, the author appreciates the funding provided by the European Commission through the HABITABLE project, through its Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement #869395.
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Zickgraf, C. Theorizing (im)mobility in the face of environmental change. Reg Environ Change 21, 126 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-021-01839-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-021-01839-2