LFU:online

Students advance their knowledge in political science by specialising in different areas of the field.

Climate Change, (Im)Mobility and Human Rights

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 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 a political science perspective.

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, short written paper

Completion of readings and assignments, regular active participation, timely submission of assignments, occascionally presentation of individual assignments, attendance, short written paper

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.

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

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.

successful completion of compulsory modules 1 to 3