LFU:online

Curr. 2021 § 5 (1) 15: This module serves to gain in-depth knowledge in selected subject areas of sociology. The students specialise in one or more subject(s) and acquire in-depth knowledge in them.

The impact of climate change on different forms of (im)mobility are often presented in the public debate as direct causality. However, academic research shows that the effects of climate change on (im)mobility are multi-layered and complex. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that climate change can result in different environmental impacts for different regions, for example increasing frequency and intensity of environmental hazards, prolonging weather-related events (periods of drought and rain) or causing them in the first place (sea level rise). On the other hand, both causes and effects of climate change and different forms of (im)mobility are closely linked to intersectional processes and structures of inequality, exclusion and marginalization. Thus, there is now widespread consensus in research that climate change is rarely the only trigger of (im)mobility, but that intersectional relations of inequality play a significant role. 

Climate change and the climate crisis are not only associated with different forms of human mobility (e.g. permanent or short-term migration, displacement, migration as adaptation, resettlement or displacement due to climate measures, internal and transnational migration), but also with the risk of making necessary migration impossible ("forced immobility") or with migration to areas that are particularly endangered by environmental hazards. All these dimensions raise many questions from a human rights perspective: On the one hand, the impact of climate change on the enjoyment of human rights and the necessity of political and legal concepts and frameworks to adequately address these issues pose a challenge; on the other hand, people who want to or have to leave their place of origin for environmental reasons face the problem that their rights are only very inadequately protected by existing human rights and migration or refugee law (e.g. Geneva Refugee Convention). The course aims to address and analyse this complexity from an intersectional perspective. The concept of intersectionality will be used as a central analytical approach during the course in order to be able to grasp the multi-layered, interacting dimensions of exclusions and inclusions that play a role in the field of tension between climate change, migration/refugee/mobility and human rights.

The course will therefore address the following questions:

- Which different forms of (im)mobility become visible in the context of climate change? What role do intersectional inequalities play in the context of these different dimensions of migration/refugee/(im)mobility?

- What human rights challenges are discernible due to the impact of environmental and climate change on (im)mobility? What are the human rights consequences for people who want to or have to leave their place of origin for environmental and climate reasons, or who cannot leave it? In what way do intersectional inequalities play a role?

- In which way are the connections between climate change, and human rights politically addressed in the context of debates on climate change-related mobility and which (political and human/legal) approaches exist?

- What are the weaknesses of (inter)national law (refugee law, migration law) with regard to the legal status of affected migrants?

Introductions to the respective topics by the lecturer, reading of and processing academic literature, short contributions by the students, group and individual assignments, short films, discussion of the course literature.

Completion of readings and assignments, regular active participation, timely submission of assignments, presentation, attendance.

Carbado, D. W./Crenshaw, K. W./Mays, V. M. & Tomlinson, B. (2013) ‘Intersectionality. Mapping the Movements of a Theory’, Du Bois Review, Vol. 10, No. 2.

Cristel, C. (2017) ‘The inadequacy of international refugee law in response to environmental migration’, in Mayer, B. and Crépeau, F. (eds.) Research Handbook on Climate Change, Migration and the Law, Cheltenham/Northampton: Edwar Elgar Publishing, 85-107.

Cundill, G. et al (2021) ‘Toward a climate mobilities research agenda: Intersectionality, immobility, and policy responses’, Global Environmental Change, Vol. 69, July 2021, pp. 1-7, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102315

Gonzalez, C. (2020) ‘Climate Change, Race, and Migration’, Journal of Law and Political Economy, Vol. 1, Issue 1, 109-146, https://doi.org/10.5070/LP61146501

Human Rights Council (2018) Addressing human rights protection gaps in the context of migration and displacement of persons across international borders resulting from the adverse effects of climate change and supporting the adaptation and mitigation plans of developing countries to bridge the protection gaps, A/HRC/38/21, https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/G1811626.pdf

Kaijser, A./Kronsell, A. (2014) ‘Climate change through the lens of intersectionality’, Environmental Politics, Vol. 23, No. 3, 417-433.

Manou, D./Baldwin, A./Cubie, D./Mihr, A. and Thorp, T. (eds.) (2017) Climate Change, Migration and Human Rights. Law and Policy Perspectives. Earthscan from Routledge.

Mayrhofer, Monika (2019) ‘Climate Change, Minorities and Mobility’, in: Grant, Peter/minority rights group international (ed.) Minority and Indigenous Trends 2019. Focus on climate justice, London, pp. 53-67.

Mayrhofer, Monika (2020) ‘Victims, security threats or agents? - Framing climate change-related mobility in international human rights documents’, International Journal of Law, Language & Discourse, Vol. 8, No. 2.

Mayrhofer, M. and Ammer, M. (2022) Climate mobility to Europe: The case of disaster displacement in Austrian asylum procedures, Frontiers in Climate, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2022.990558/full

UNGA (2020) Report of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, Cecilia Jimenez-Damary, UN Doc A/75/207.

Wiegel, H., Boas, I. and Warner, J. (2019) ‘A mobilities perspective on migration in the context of environmental change’, WIREs Climate Change, Vol 10, Issue 6, https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.610.

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