Climates of Migration

Climates of Migration examines through transregional and transhistorical lenses how environmental and migration issues intersect, and how  the disinformation and fear generated by the political instrumentalization of these is shaping contemporary societies as evident in media discourse, propaganda, literature, art, visual culture, policy-making and new technologies.

Climates of Migration offers a transcultural, transhistorical, transcolonial and transnational analysis of the interplay between migration and climate change.

Climate and migration provide the organizational pillars, and the plural “climates” in the title accentuates the figurative non-literal sense to signify the atmosphere that is attached to anxiety, disinformation, fear and violence. Competing narratives and storytelling mechanisms conjointly operate over a longer history of colonial conquest and remain present in the mind-sets informing the afterlives of empire, as evidenced in debates on identity politics, nationalism, environmental, racial and social justice. The broad transregional (Africa, the Caribbean, Europe) and transdisciplinary framework privileges comparative analysis between various disciplines and fields, notably migration studies, environmental humanities, eco-feminism, nationalism, and decolonial and postcolonial studies, while adopting multigenre approaches that include a diversity of perspectives from literature, media discourse, art, propaganda, visual culture and new technologies. Together, these challenge the criminalizing, debasing and often dehumanizing logic associated with official policymaking and propose instead alternative forms of humanization and identification aimed at fostering modes of empathy. Climates of Migration explores various forms of environmental exploitation and degradation, especially in African literatures where the thematic transformations that have resulted from engagement with environmental ecocide have contributed to a revitalization of writing. Planetary climate change and the accompanying disruption to the global ecosystem is traced to European territorial conquest and expansion and subsequently mapped onto the contemporary institutional (European Union) and political discourses that are structuring our present, while also enabling unforeseen forms of planetary consciousness.