The Socio-Natural Question: How Climate Change Adds to Social Inequalities

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article traces two generations of scholarship in the climate change-migration debate, which often focus on ‘resilience’ of migrants. The author finds the concept of resilience is deeply biased toward blaming the victims (migrants) and argues that it should be discarded. Moreover, he claims that the debates on climate change and forced migration are based on the idea that nature and society/culture can be neatly separated. Considering this as a false dichotomy, the author points out the need for a new generation of scholarship, which should devote more attention to how responses to climate change (including migration as adaptation) are implicated in reproducing existing social inequalities.