A friend of mine Naomi Hogan from Australia is also at the conference and sent me this link to your blog. I’m doing my phd on migrants and climate change, and though I haven’t began my fieldwork yet (so cant provide a ‘voice from the field’), I’d love to reflect on your comments if I may?

First, I think this issue of categorisations is crucial. Categories are never neutral – they reflect a discourse, or narrative and they simplify (or hide) a complex story and set of assumptions. One of the consequences of categorization is that inevitably it separates the migration act from its wider context as people seek explanations for population movements in terms of predefined ‘causal’ categories such as ‘number and severity of natural disaster’ or ‘urban employment growth’. I personally don’t think this is very useful, at least from the perspective of understanding how climatic changes might affect existing migration patterns, and communities (as you point out, mostly in the South).

You talk about making the issue visible. Yes, but for whom? For me, the key voice that is missing in a lot of this discussion, is those of migrants themselves. Seasonal migration for example is a well known tactic used by rural peoples seeking to diversify their income in the face either natural risks such as drought, or structural changes in the rural economy (brought on by capitalist modes of production) e.g. through the mechanisation of agriculture. Hardly any research has been done on the impacts of this kind of migration on sending communities – there are mixed reports about the benefits of remittances for example. Some research has found that returned migrants bring back progressive ideas for example on gender relations.

What I’m trying to say is that there is a meta-narrative going on here – it says mobility is not ideal. It says, people being ‘rooted’ and in one place is equated with a stable maybe ‘sustainable’ relationship. This is actually historically a highly conservative view which perceives people on the move as suspicious, vagrant and threatening (witness anxiety about gypsies, so called wandering jews, and more recently refugees and terrorists). Another narrative that we see is mobility is a wonderful thing- the idea of nomads etc – both have ideological assumptions in them. I think we need to be careful about that.

I think we also need to be careful when talking about migration being ‘forced’ or ‘voluntary’ – surely this is something that is really difficult for anyone to be conclusive about – (perhaps even by migrants themselves!?) Migration is one of the most complex manifestations of socio-ecological relations. We need to find ways to understand it, from the perspective of migrants.

Ok thats probably enough for now. I’m really interested to see how the discussions progress. Well done you guys for going all that way to meet with people to discuss this really important issue.

Hedda Ransan-Elliott