Abstract
Climate change impacts natural and human systems, including migration patterns. But isolating climate change as the driver of migration oversimplifies a complex and multicausal phenomenon. This article brings together the literature on global migration and displacement, environmental migration, vulnerability and precarity, and borders and migration governance to examine the ways in which climate-induced migrants experience precarity in transit. Specifically, it assesses the literature on the ways in which states create or amplify precarity in multiple ways: through the use of categories, by externalizing borders, and through investments in border infrastructures. Overall, the paper suggests that given the shift from governance regimes purportedly based on protection and facilitation to regimes based on security, deterrence, and enforcement, borders are complicit in producing and amplifying the vulnerability of migrants. The phenomenon of climate migration is particularly explicative in demonstrating how these regimes, which categorize individuals based on why they move, are and will continue to be unable to manage future migration flows.
Highlights
Current media headlines regarding the migrant crisis in the European Union (EU) and the migrant caravans in Central America already draw links between current migration patterns and climate change: Central Americans Farmers Head to the U.S, Fleeing
This article reviewed the current statistics on international migration and displacement and explored if and how climate change will intersect and influence the movement of people
While climate change will impact the mobility of people, assuming it is an isolated driver obfuscates the complexity of migration decisions
Summary
Already witnessing such effects from flooding and forest fires to sea-level rise and extreme weather events These subsequently threaten human settlements through losses of housing, livelihoods, and social and cultural resources, and impact human migration patterns and large-scale population displacements (IPCC 2014, 2018). This paper brings together the literature on global migration and displacement, environmental migration, vulnerability and precarity, and borders and migration governance to examine the ways in which environmental migrants experience precarity in transit. It considers the literature on the ways in which states create or amplify precarity in multiple ways: through the use of categories, by externalizing borders, and through investments in border infrastructures. As such, when the section on border and migration governance discusses the impact of selective migration categories and restrictive border controls on migrants’ precarity, it inherently includes climate migrants in this assessment
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
