01/12/2022 – Climate Change and Human Migration

Transdisciplinarity: Independent Academic Initiative (link) (in collaboration with Institute of Anthropology and Ethnology, and Center for Migration Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan) invites all interested to webinar on Climate Change and Human Migration presented within a series of seminars entitled “Resilience in the context of permanent crisis” (link).

Presenters: Professor Kirsten Hastrup (University of Copenhagen) and Professor Etienne Piguet (University of Neuchâtel). Moderator: Professor Michał Buchowski (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan).

Time: 1 December (Thursday), 6 p.m. (online zoom)

Everyone is welcome and you can register here:

https://forms.gle/pFXYf8mnoDgaCTQ68

Abstract:

Climate change is a concern of the whole world and it has become one of the main problems of the modern world. An important aspect of global warming is its environmental consequences forcing entire populations to migrate. These phenomena induced research interest and the need for policy makers to deal with them. Knowledge about them, even if meticulously collected, is still fragmented; policies, though sometimes coordinated, are chaotic, often postponed or simply ignored. Desertification, rising sea levels, cyclical floods and cyclones, and other climatic disasters affect areas inhabited for generations that are now forcefully abandoned. The concept of “environmental migrants” or “climate migrants” has entered the common scientific, political and public vocabulary, symbolizing the fact that climate and migration, natural and social phenomena are tightly intertwined. Detailed topics related to international policy and cooperation in relation to climate migrants, the impact of migration on growing social tensions, and the protection of migrants require deeper reflection. The related environmental and social changes call for integrated research, the results of which can be used in policymaking, which will allow the outlining of action plans that will open a possibility to master the natural element and spontaneous social processes.

Kirsten Hastrup is professor emeritus of anthropology at University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She has worked consistently on the interplay between anthropology and nature, and she has conducted long term fieldwork in Iceland and Greenland.

Between 2008 and 2014 she was heading a major ERC grant – exploring multiple field sites across the globe. The project, Waterworlds, focused on social responses to climatic change (link). Ten scholars were active members, and worked in each their field.

From 2014-17 she was the PI in The NOW Project: Living Resources and Human Societies around the North Water in the Thule Area, NW Greenland (link). This project was interdisciplinary, including biologists, anthropologists, and archeologists.

She has authored numerous books and articles; among books are A Place Apart: An Anthropological Study of the Icelandic World (Oxford University Press 1995); A Passage to Anthropology: Between Experience and Theory (Routledge 1995); Anthropology and Nature(Routledge 2013); and Waterworlds: Anthropology in fluid environments (Berghahn Books 2015).

Ettienne Piguet is professor of geography of mobilities at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. He is also a Vice-President of the Swiss Federal Commission on Migration, and he has hold several functions in national and international scientific bodies and organizations. His research interest include migration flows, discrimination of migrants on the labor market, migrant entrepreneurship, asylum policies and naturalization law.

Etienne Piguet is known for his studies on migration and climate change. He coordinated also the large international research project Staying or leaving? Migration in the life plans of West African students: case studies in Abidjan, Niamey and Saint-Louis financed by the Swiss Network for International Studies in collaboration with International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UNESCO. 

He published many articles in the journals like “Annals of the Association of American Geographers”, and „Population Space and Place”, as well as an update Linking climate change, environmental degradation, and migration: An update after 10 years (Wileys Interdisciplinary Reviews – WIREs Climate Change 2021). He co-edited five books, inter alia: E. Piguet, F. Laczko and M. Vischer, People on the Move in a Changing ClimateI (Springer 2014), and authored several books, including Asile et réfugiés: Repenser la protection (Lausanne: EPFL Press 2019)

Facebook page for an event:  https://fb.me/e/7qbG410hq