Climate Migration

In an era of accelerating climate disruption, countries around the world are also contending with an upsurge of migration. While there are many drivers of migration, climate and migration are often linked, with environmental stressors compounding other socioeconomic factors. Climate displacement is already a reality, with hundreds of thousands of people internally displaced and others crossing international borders. This will only grow over the coming decades. While climate migration shares many common features with other forms of migration, both historical and contemporary, it also presents unique challenges given the pervasiveness of environmental disruption, meaning that no place is safe from climate change. Students will grapple with this condition through two complementary parts of the seminar: 1. A foundation in the field through readings and discussion of major topics and 2. The opportunity to engage with an urgent emerging problem in climate migration and provide a deliverable to a real-world client.

Given the destabilizing effects of climate change, it can be challenging for individuals and institutions to develop a sense of agency in shaping the future. In response, the seminar will begin by considering stubborn optimism and envisioning positive future alternatives that allow for not only surviving, but thriving, in the emerging landscape. From this point of departure, the course will delve into major topics including equity and justice in relocation, concepts of livability, mobility and immobility, voluntary and involuntary migration, shifts in immigration and refugee law and policy, migration as adaptation, and receiving communities. Students will put these concepts into practice through a project for the Climigration Network to be mutually determined. One option is considering how land can be responsibly and equitably used after residents relocate away from floods and fires. This issue of post-relocation land use is an emerging area of practice where strategies and solutions will be increasingly in demand as more and more communities relocate. Through the two complementary parts of the course, students will have an opportunity to be at the cutting-edge of practice while engaging thoughtfully with the full complexity of underlying climate migration challenges.