Introduction to the special section: unfolding a governance perspective on climate-related mobilities

ABSTRACT

Attention to the linkages between climate change and human mobility practices – including immobility – has mounted as climate-related mobility becomes more evident. Research and policy engagement have followed, with increasing recognition of the complexity of climate-related mobility countering simplistic causal models. In this introduction and special section, we seek specifically to highlight the relationship between governance and climate-related mobility. The relevance of governance, which we consider broadly through the lens of political authority, is a growing undercurrent in climate mobility research. This special section seeks therefore to explicitly theorize the role of governance in shaping climate-related mobility and examine it empirically, building on recent developments within the literature. Through a theoretical and analytical discussion in this introduction and four empirically based contributions from South to North America and West Africa to the Horn of Africa, it unfolds diverse perspectives and approaches to the role of governance in mobility contexts and practices, particularly in relation to slow-onset climate change. Ultimately, this special section seeks to engage scholars in further theorizing of the relationship between governance and climate-related mobility.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• mobility
• migration
• governance
• political authority

1. Introduction

As various forms of climate-change-related population movements have become evident across the globe, attention to the linkages between climate change and human mobility practices – including immobility – has mounted. Research and policy engagement have followed. From an initial framing of the relationship between environmental change and human mobility as rather direct and causal, research has increasingly highlighted its complexity (Wiegel et al., 2019). Empirical findings have pointed to the many scalar and temporal factors at play as well as to the manifold configurations between climate-affected contexts and those navigating such complexity in their everyday lives (see e.g. Barnett & McMichael, 2018). In addition, there has been growing focus on slow-onset events – from sea level rise to increasing seasonal variability – as relevant but under-researched in relation to human mobility.

Findings from this growing literature increasingly evoke governance dynamics and actors, from resource access to broader aspects of power and authority in climate governance (Bulkeley, 2016; Ciplet et al., 2015; Hickmann, 2016; Schlosberg & Collins, 2014). Governance is therefore emerging – often implicitly – as a significant factor in studies of climate-related (im)mobility. However, little research explicitly theorizes the role of governance factors or examines them empirically. Instead, the study of governance is often siloed in separate studies of climate or migration governance (Zickgraf et al., 2024), while empirical case studies of climate-related mobility often fail to examine dynamics of power and authority.

This special section therefore takes up the role of governance in climate-related mobility, building on recent developments within climate mobility literature (Boas et al., 2022; Piguet, 2021; Sheller, 2018; Zickgraf, 2019). We use governance as an analytical rather than a normative concept to describe the configuration of political authorities that seek to define and enforce collectively binding decisions on members of society (Lund, 2006), and their relationship with these members. We therefore employ a broad understanding of ‘political authorities’ – encompassing the exercise of local governance to international climate mobility regimes. This understanding looks beyond state institutions to include other formal and informal institutions, organizations and norms that shape (im)mobility responses to climate change. Within this, we pay particular attention to how multi-scalar governance dynamics function in specific localities. The exercise and experiences of governance, mobility practices and environmental change are often highly localized, requiring situated analysis of their nature in a particular locality.

This broad understanding of governance, further described below, contributes to ongoing work across scholarly literatures to bring dimensions of governance, climate change and mobility together and seek theoretical and analytical ways this might be done. Such attempts are emerging on mobilities (e.g. Boas & Wiegel, 2021; Sheller, 2018), on vulnerability (e.g. Weiler et al., 2018), on climate change adaptation (e.g. McLeman & Hunter, 2010) and the nascent literature on climate migration itself (Piguet, 2021; Piguet et al., 2011). In various ways, these literatures increasingly emphasize the role of diverse formal and informal governance actors and institutions across scales in influencing climate-related mobility. They also consider how climate change is experienced locally by different actors, as well as how mobility decisions are made and practices altered in different contexts.

With these recent developments as its point of departure, this special section further unfolds diverse analytical perspectives and approaches to the role of governance in mobility responses, particularly to slow-onset climate change. The aim is not to provide an exhaustive review but rather to introduce concrete attempts at theorizing governance in relation to climate-related mobility, and, through this, to open analytical space for discussion and further theorizing and scholarly engagement on this topic. This aim is furthered through the diverse individual contributions to the special section. The contributions consider various governance contexts and fields of intervention, spanning geographies from West Africa to the Horn of Africa and South to North America. They consider various forms of mobility including displacement, internal and international migration, return migration, and resettlement, but also involuntary immobility.

Finally, this introduction offers reflections on the interrelations between research, power and policy in relation to climate-related mobility. It not only highlights the dynamics of power and authority inherent in climate mobility. It considers how climate mobility comes to be constituted as a field requiring intervention. Ultimately, it considers the implications of reframing climate-related mobility as shaped by governance, rather than merely by climate change impacts, for both research and policy.

2. From climate refugees to climate-induced migration – and beyond

Despite simplistic and geo-deterministic discourses on “environmental refugees” and “climate migration” that explain most human activities as a response to the natural environment, concerted efforts to understand the relationship between climate change and human mobility as complex and multifaceted have increasingly emerged (Boas et al., 2019; Hugo, 2011; Hunter et al., 2015; Ferris, 2020). This complexity finds its expression in the widely acknowledged heuristic framework on migration drivers (Black et al., 2011), which points out that migration in the context of climate change is not only driven by environmental factors alone but also by the interaction with existing economic, political, social, and demographic drivers on the macro, meso and micro levels. With drivers understood as forces leading to the inception of migration and the perpetuation of movement, Van Hear et al. (2018) further distinguish between predisposing, proximate, precipitating and mediating drivers, each having different potential for political intervention. In the last decade, the literature on drivers has been particularly rich in empirical case studies and reviews of cases that offer an immersion into the complex response chains of individuals or their families and households when faced with the need to leave or stay, as well as the diversity of ways to do so (Borderon et al., 2019; Cattaneo et al., 2019; Hoffmann et al., 2020). These studies provide fresh empirical evidence that climate and environmental changes are factors adding to and/or impacting on conventional drivers of migration (Bettini & Gioli, 2016).

Other conceptual frameworks and theoretical reflections that have enriched the field of research on the migration-environment nexus have been useful in describing the different forms of mobility and immobility that climate change have given rise to. The aspiration-ability framework developed by Carling (2017) and Carling and Shewel (2018) as well as the aspiration-capability addendum suggested by De Haas (2021), each allow for a better understanding of human mobility as an intrinsic part of broader processes of social and environmental change, as well as of the relationship between structure and agency within concrete situations. By breaking up migration outcomes into two separate steps – on the hand the evaluation of migration as a potential course of action in a given context, on the other hand the realization of mobility or immobility at a given moment, new ways to comprehend mobility outcomes of climate change have been introduced.

The application of the literature on mobilities (see e.g. Cresswell, 2010 and Wiegel et al., 2019 in the context of environmental change), additionally allows for the inclusion of diverse forms of movement: circular forms of mobility, such as seasonal mobility typical in agrarian settings, onwards-migration from an initial destination, resettlements, displacement, return movements and forced immobility, among others. Increases in environmental stress on populations, especially due to slow-onset climate change, are indeed expected to contribute to shifting patterns of all forms of mobility, especially internal movements (Chen & Mueller, 2018; McLeman & Hunter, 2010; Rigaud et al., 2018). Moreover, attention to complex trajectories (Schapendonk & Steel, 2014) – including instances in which mobility practices are episodic, seasonal, circular, or multidirectional (progressive with intermediate destinations along the way rather than between two points with an ultimate destination) – are recent dimensions of the literature that offer an analytical lens for better understanding of the complexity and diversity of the relationships between climate change and mobility and the human responses to environmental disturbances. So do considerations of the translocality of households formed by both members who have migrated and others who have remained in their places of origin (Rockenbauch et al., 2019; Sakdapolrak et al., 2024), the latter’s ability to stay in place often enabled by the former.

The literature has already underlined that diverse and intricate forms of climate-related mobility pose a challenge to current governance structures. Authors argue that existing institutions and policies are generally not designed to address the complexity and concurrent uncertainty inherent in the shifting relationship between social processes and environmental change (Warner, 2010). Thus, beyond overall policies to limit climate change, it remains a challenge to frame appropriate mobility policies that do not simply attempt to enable or force people to either stay in place or move elsewhere. Nevertheless, studies of the migration-climate change nexus that take into account governance and its related challenges remain the exception rather than the rule. Indeed, the study of governance is often siloed in separate studies of climate or migration governance, while empirical case studies of climate-related mobility rarely examine the political factors at play (Zickgraf, 2019; Zickgraf et al., 2024). At stated by Piguet, this lack of governance and power analysis is “the most striking weakness of the current research on environmental migration”, wherefore “[i]t remains difficult to contextualise empirical results within larger sets of power relations and governance” (Piguet, 2021, 10). Similar critiques are raised by Boas et al. (2018); Geddes et al. (2012); and McCarney and Kent (2020). Engaging the climate mobility and governance in a common analytical framework might thus be one of the central challenges over the next 10 years (Piguet, 2021).

Within climate governance studies, Methman and Oels (2015) have traced the genealogy of environmental migration from a “pathology to be prevented” over an issue of “refugee rights” to becoming a “rational strategy of adaptation” to unavoidable levels of climate change (Methman & Oels, 2015, p. 51). However, while mobility – under certain circumstances and for some groups – can be an effective form of adaptation to the negative effects of climate change, it may increase impoverishment and deepen vulnerability for others (Vinke et al., 2020). Whether migration advances adaptation or produces precarity is therefore an empirical question to be studied, always taking into account migrant positionality and the ways in which migrants’ social practices are structured by axes of social inequality (such as gender, class, age, ethnicity or regional origin) (Porst & Sakdapolrak, 2018). At the same time, the derivative shift from governing climate change as risk management to building resilience tends to occlude the political, as responsibility for resilience is placed on the potential victims of the effects of climate change. Drawing on the above developments in the literatures, it is our assertion that a shift in focus from (reactive) displacement or (proactive) migration to a non-normative examination of mobility responses more broadly allows a more fine-grained analysis of the mobility hierarchies, power dynamics and differentiated meanings that shape any mobility process.

3. Unfolding a governance perspective

We find it relevant and pressing to build on the advances outlined above and unfold a more explicit governance perspective on climate-related mobility. In this section, we therefore explore the role of governance in climate-related mobility, drawing on diverse literature from geography and political ecology, mobility and migration, and political science. Specifically, we draw on theorizing of political authority for an expansive account of how governance is constituted and exercised in practice and consider what that means for climate mobility. We then offer reflections on how an analysis of governance in relation to climate mobility might unfold, presenting theorizing within governance literature that could provide insight and analytical entry points. We focus specifically on the nature of political authority, the exercise of political authority, and the relationship between political authorities and populations.

3.1 Conceptualizing governance in climate mobility

With a focus on governance of climate-related mobility, we suggest foregrounding how diverse governance institutions might shape climate-related mobility in a variety of ways. This can include mediating the environmental, socio-political and economic contexts shaping climate-related mobility as well as shaping mobility responses themselves. The latter can both be directly, e.g. through mobility regimes or transport infrastructure, as well as more diffusely through shaping the aspirations and capabilities of those experiencing such changes. To examine this, we turn to the broad concept of ‘political authority’ or the diverse institutions that govern territories, people and resources (Lund, 2006). This conceptualization is necessarily broad, responding to the complexity of climate-related mobility. It allows for a situated analysis tailored to diverse empirical contexts and fields – capturing the distinct empirical contributions to this special section, but also the diversity of climate-related mobility across the globe.

The role of political authority in shaping how climate change is felt and how people respond is well-documented in a range of literatures. Vulnerability and political ecology literatures document how historical and current relationships around development, access, marginalization, extraction, etc. shape the differentiated impacts of climate change within particular localities (Adger, 1999, Adger et al., 2009; Ribot, 2014; Taylor, 2014). Related mobility literature describes how marginalized and vulnerable populations are often left behind, raising theoretical issues of the uneven impacts of climate change in relation to spatial injustices and uneven mobilities (Sheller, 2018). Literatures on responses to climate change indicate that adaptation and development efforts can both ameliorate climate change impacts as well as exacerbate vulnerability and lead to maladaptation or reproduce vulnerability (Eriksen et al., 2021), with this often tightly bound to political and power dynamics (Eriksen et al., 2015; Nightingale, 2017).

The role of political authorities in shaping climate-related mobilities specifically is relatively less explored. Of the existing research, some projections and analyses explicitly acknowledge the direct role of political authorities in shaping forms of climate-related mobility. This is for instance in burgeoning literature of climate-related resettlements or relocations (see Arnall, 2019; Funder et al., 2018; Lindegaard, 2018; López Meneses, 2024) as well as increasing recognition in mobilities literature (see discussion in Boas et al., 2022). An understanding of the role for governance in shaping climate-related mobility is also increasingly evident in policy discussions and practice, for instance laws and policies on cross-border movements, e.g. cross-border disaster displacement; integration of climate-related movements in domestic development and labour policies (e.g. the Ghanaian Labour Migration Policy, see also Clement et al., 2021); as well as where development and adaptation policies and interventions seek to prevent distress (or other) migration from a climate change affected area (Clement et al., 2021; Danida, 2021; Rigaud et al., 2018). In these examples, political authorities may seek explicitly to shape forms of climate-related mobility.

However, much of the literature on climate-related mobility reserves a more implicit, even unacknowledged role for political authorities. This may be because the role of political authorities is often indirect; in many cases, authorities shape factors of relevance to climate-related mobility rather than mobility practices themselves. This can for instance be through adaptation, livelihood support, infrastructure development, social protection, resource management, financial access, etc. Authorities’ influence on climate-related mobility may thus in many cases be indirect and even unintentional, a by-product of other interventions or historical development pathways (see Jarawura et al., 2024). Political authorities can also have an indirect role in shaping how people may move/stay in response to climate change through policies and interventions informing possible mobility options more broadly. For instance, the overall lack of safe, regular, and orderly migration pathways may cause high-risk journeys (Ayalew Mengiste, 2021; Boyden & Howard, 2013; Semela & Cochrane, 2019). The potential significance of this indirect role of governance in influencing forms and scale of mobility is indicated in the latest Groundswell report, which point to the role of “inclusive, sustainable development” in reducing internal climate-related migration by up to 80% by 2050 (Clement et al., 2021).

Recent work increasingly grapples with the governance conditions shaping climate mobility, as well as how climate mobility fits into sustainable development efforts. This includes work setting out future research priorities around conditions and outcomes of climate mobility, with an explicit practice and policy lens (Simpson et al., 2024); it also includes work linking governance dynamics of sustainable development and climate-related migration, for instance in securing inclusive, sustainable development in migrant receiving areas (Adger et al., 2024). Linkages between climate-related movement and sustainable development will be an important area of inquiry and practice for researchers and governance actors in the coming years in order to understand and facilitate best outcomes on the ground. Yet it is crucial that they remain situated within larger analyses of power and authority.

3.2 Unfolding a governance analysis

Political authority is clearly relevant to climate-related mobility. How one might approach an analysis of the role of political authority remains less clear. Here, we therefore draw out key aspects of the robust and diverse literature on political authority and link these to climate-related mobility. This section does not provide a systematic review of political authority literature or argue for a specific approach. Rather, it sketches out possible lines of analytical enquiry in examining the role of political authority in climate-related mobility, specifically considering the nature of political authority, the exercise of political authority, and the relationship between political authorities and populations. It draws on various academic disciplines and literatures and seeks to open up for further empirical engagement and theoretical debate.

3.2.1. The nature of political authority

Examinations of governance often direct attention to formal government institutions – national ministries, district assemblies, international governance fora, municipal governments. These can indeed be highly relevant to climate-related mobility, from resettlement (Arnall, 2019; Lindegaard, 2020a; Meneses, this issue) to internal migration (Clement et al., 2021; Rigaud et al., 2018). Yet they offer only a partial account of political authority and risk informing simplified understandings of governance in climate-related mobility. Diverse theorizing points instead to public authority as exercised through the aggregate, sometimes contradictory efforts of a variety of institutions (Lund, 2006, p. 686; see also Rose & Miller, 1992, p. 176). Such an understanding of aggregated authority characterized by institutional pluralism has been argued across academic fields and empirical contexts over the last thirty years and more (Abrams, 1977/1988, Mitchell, 1991; Lund, 2006; Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan, 2014; Rose & Miller, 1992). Similar understandings are now emerging in climate mobilities literature, which describe ‘climate mobility regimes’ or the “interconnected sets of socio-economic and political relations consisting of different types of actors, that frame, manage, and regulate the nexus between mobilities and climate change … resulting in particular modes of governing of climate mobilities” (Boas et al., 2022).

Theorizing on the plurality of political authority is complemented by literature on formality and scales. The former points to the relevance of not only formal (state) authorities, but also informal authorities such as religious, traditional or non-governmental authorities in governing spaces and people (Lund, 2006). The latter challenges conceptualizations of fixed, nested levels (e.g. local, national, and global), and instead contends that these intersect through non-concentric constellations (see Brenner, 2001, pp. 591–592). This opens to understandings of intersecting governance roles and regimes across and within scales, also emerging in mobilities literature – for instance in the role of hometown associations and migration networks in facilitating migration and trans-local flows of information and resources (Kleist, 2014; Lacomba & Cloquell, 2014; Sørensen, 2016). It is evident in the scaled international, regional and domestic dynamics that shape mobilities, and a host of related relations, within and across localities (Lavanex & Piper, 2021; Sheller & Urry, 2006). The concept of scale has also emerged in environmental management and climate change adaptation literatures, exploring, e.g. how international actors shape local contexts (e.g. Adger et al., 2005; Lindegaard, 2020b), and is now emerging in nascent literature on ‘climate mobility regimes’ (Boas et al., 2022).

Considering political authority as such an ‘amalgamated result’ of these complex constellations (Lund, 2006, p. 686) draws attention to how climate-related mobility is both indirectly and directly governed by diverse authorities across scales. Formal state institutions may provide social services, resource management and livelihood opportunities and access, etc. in climate change affected areas – important in terms of vulnerability and adaptation (Ribot, 2014) with potential implications for climate-related mobility (Clement et al., 2021; Warner, 2010). Informal institutions, from traditional authorities, migration networks and associations and community groups, are often also highly significant in resource access, livelihood opportunities and mobility patterns (Seter et al., 2018; Sikor & Lund, 2009; Sørensen, 2016), and in some cases also service provision (e.g. Rohregger et al., 2021). A range of formalized non-state actors, including international organizations and NGOs, can also be highly influential in shaping many of these same factors, from livelihoods to mobility.

3.2.2. How political authority is exercised

The question then becomes the processes through which political authority is exercised. This requires a movement from delineating problems and possible solutions to implementing these in practice. The first is a process of problematization, linked to normative stances of what should be, and defining problems requiring intervention in relation to these (Rose & Miller, 1992). The realm of possible solutions proceeds from a particular problematization. Climate-related mobility itself evidences this – from climate refugees to adaptive climate migrants, problem framing prompts different ‘solutions’ and the engagement of different institutions (Stojanov et al., 2021, see also discussion regarding mobility in Sheller & Urry, 2006). Problematization is bound up to knowledge, power and politics, with questions and contestations of whose epistemologies and priorities count, and often multiple problematizations and understandings existing in competition (de Wit, 2018; Yumagulova et al., 2023). This is evidenced in climate and adaptation literatures in recent years, e.g. literature on the politics of adaptation (Eriksen et al., 2015; Nightingale, 2017), the (often Western) knowledge underpinning adaptation (Mahony & Hulme, 2018; Pasgaard & Strange, 2013); and how particular conceptualizations of adaptation travel across scales (de Wit, 2018).

Problematization is embodied in the articulation of policy, programming and interventions, from formal to informal (Rose & Miller, 1992). In climate-related mobility, framings of climate mobility in policy discourse are central to policy responses. A recent analysis finds that policy discourse tends to focus on – and problematize – outmigration, but engages to a much lesser extent with return migration and immobile populations (Murzakulova et al., 2024). Similarly, a review of donor-supported projects finds “few projects proactively supporting people’s use of migration as a means of adapting to climate change impacts” (Stojanov et al., 2021, p. 220).

In addition, literature on development and democratic governance points to the relevance of government structures and processes to input and outcomes. Studies on representation, decentralization and accountability have reemerged as important themes. These include local government and the politics and policies of decentralization (Faguet, 2014; Hickey & Mohan, 2004; Ribot, 2007; Smoke, 2013; Törnquist et al., 2009; Waylen, 2015); on the role of political parties (Wilkinson, 2015); on accountability (Grindle, 2013; Manor, 2011); on elite capture in local participatory approaches (Lund & Saito-Jensen, 2013); and on the use of finance to strengthen accountability (UNCDF, 2006; Webster, 2015). Many of these return the focus to formal state systems and explore who has influence at what point of problematization, e.g. if local governments have influence in programme formulation or merely implement nationally-determined programmes. In adaptation, there are indications that decentralized decision-making improves outcomes for marginalized groups (Buhl-Nielsen et al., 2021), and development and increasingly adaptation debates emphasize the need for localization to include local knowledge and meet local needs (see, e.g. Baguios et al., 2021; IIED, 2022).

Other literatures highlight the significance of informal practice and the relation between these and the de jure processes outlined above. This is part and parcel of the plurality of political authority described above. Literature on ‘street level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 1980), twilight institutions (Lund, 2006), de facto state practice (Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan, 2014), and the ‘state idea’ (Mitchell, 1991) all emphasize the blurred edges of formal governance institutions and practice and point to the many other actors that come to occupy political authority in practice. These would indicate that, in relation to climate-related mobility, researchers would do well to cast their nets wide to capture diverse authorities, formal and informal, that shape how climate change is experienced and responded to in practice.

3.2.3 The relationship between political authority and populations

Fundamental to a governance analysis is the relationship between political authorities and populations, in other words, how authority is (re)produced and challenged. This departs from conceptualizations of political authorities as fixed, rather highlighting the mutability of political authority – i.e. how it can be challenged, undermined, augmented or shifted – in its interactions with a population, with particular groups, with other governance institutions (see, e.g. Lund, 2006); and in relation to shifting socio-ecological conditions (see e.g. Biggs, 2012; Christoplos et al., 2017; Siddiqi & Blackburn, 2022). Such a perspective provides insight not only into the nature of power and authority generally, but into the changing contexts in which climate-related mobility is practiced.

There are many strands of literature on the nature and derivation of authority, emerging from diverse disciplines. These include explorations of recognition, representation, social contracts and legitimacy, to name a few. Literature on recognition argues that institutions gain recognition and authority when they provide access or services to a population (Sikor & Lund, 2009), suggesting that authority is linked to practice and function and that an institution’s authority may be differentiated within a population. Adaptation literature specifically has examined how climate change and adaptation provide new arenas in which jockeying over power and recognition play out, entailing new or reinforced forms of political authority (Lindegaard, 2018; Nightingale, 2017).

Similarly, studies of social contract examine how political authorities must fulfil certain expectations or norms to maintain authority. Social contracts have been examined between citizens and state and, by implication, citizen and citizen (Hickey & King, 2016; Shafik, 2021), but increasingly also as sub-national, trans-national and supra-national based on the institutions involved rather than national borders (Loewe et al., 2019). Citizens can experience multiple social contracts with different institutions, each with specific geographical scopes, temporal dimensions (e.g. ‘how long’ and ‘when’) and substance. In the fulfilment of norms and expectations, social contracts are also linked to studies of legitimacy, also in adaptation, where authorities must fulfil particular expectations to maintain legitimacy and authority (Christoplos et al., 2017). Another account of authority, focusing particularly on formal institutions, points to the importance of types of representation (Pitkin, 1967). Such studies shed light on how the nature of representation both reflects and reproduces relations of power and institutions of political authority (Harriss-White, 2003; Törnquist, 2009). Representation has also been explored in the production of vulnerability to climate change (Mikulewicz, 2018; Ojha et al., 2016; Ribot, 2014).

These literatures – though diverse – highlight several important points of relevance to climate-related mobility. Firstly, governance is differentiated for different groups within a population due to differing landscapes of authority, positionality, and influence. This can be for marginalized groups, youth, women, farmers, labourers, that engage in different social contracts with different institutions and likely experience disparate forms of representation and access. It can translate into diverging experiences of climate change and avenues of response (see e.g. Ribot, 2014). Secondly, political authority is neither static nor independent from societies and environments but emerges through interactions with them (Nightingale, 2017). Individuals and groups as well as environments thereby influence political authority and the practice of governance in a process of co-production (Christoplos et al., 2017; Lund, 2016; Siddiqi & Blackburn, 2022). Climate change and related mobility may therefore affect the (re)production of authority, e.g. the basis for legitimacy or recognition of authorities, or the social contract between authorities and populations, an area for further exploration. This literature indicates that governance of climate-related mobility should be understood as multi-directional, rather than a one-way process of governance over climate-related mobility. Finally, the theorizing on political authority outlined above reveals the centrality of structure-agency interplay in informing climate-related mobility (see Boas et al., 2018, Webster, 2023) – where structures of authority are (re)produced through their interactions with populations in climate-affected contexts. This fundamentally challenges simple conceptualizations of climate migrants or climate refugees, seen to exert agency despite structural constraints or to be bound by them and lack agency. We therefore argue that the most fruitful examinations of climate-related mobility will be situated in the interaction between agency and structure, with an eye to political authority.

4. Engaging empirically

The empirical contributions to this special section engage with diverse forms of climate-related mobility and governance. They do so in a variety of geographical and socio-ecological settings and employ distinct theoretical and analytical approaches. Together, they illustrate the relevance of analytically engaging with governance to better understand the factors informing mobility in climate-affected contexts.

From a decolonial perspective, Yumagulova et al. introduce indigenous perspectives on climate displacement. By drawing on case studies of disaster evacuation and long-term displacement following a flood disaster among First Nation Communities in Canada; the impact of plans to move the Indonesian capital from Java to East Kalimatan on the Dayak people already living there; and the (mis)recognition of Indigenous Mãori in Aotearoa New Zealand’s coastal management policies, the authors develop a climate immobility-mobility-displacement continuum which they suggest as a framework for better understanding Indigenous climate mobilities. A central and empirically sustained argument is that solutions to climate-related displacement not only need to be developed by listening to and critically engaging with the people displaced but also need to extend beyond capacity building. Climate displacement governance must be developed with an explicit acknowledgement of colonial displacement and on-going dispossession of Indigenous lands and waters. It must also include Indigenous Peoples as key collaborators and rely on co-governance structures.

Examining the role of governance in relocations as disaster risk reduction, Meneses engages critically with definitions of climate-related risk informing relocations in Bogotá, Columbia. Meneses’ contribution puts forward a trifold analytical framework to analyse how climate-related risk is induced and administered by political authorities. The framework considers the dynamics of governance and authority behind risk production, attribution and distribution: risk production investigates how risk is constituted through historical actions; risk attribution considers how these actions are embedded within particular knowledge systems; and risk distribution examines the mechanisms behind the particular spatial incidence of risk. The empirical case of resettlements in Bogotá illustrates how risk is defined and applied in a manner that disadvantages and disempowers low-income communities, while benefitting other socio-economic groups and actors. It therefore documents how dominant epistemologies of climate change and response, in this case ostensibly climate-related metrics on risk, are used by political authorities and powerful local actors to further their own interests. Meneses documents how this marginalizes less powerful actors and their understandings of risk, narrowing possible adaptation pathways and increasing the risk of maladaptation.

To support efforts to add nuance to studies of climate-related mobility, Webster’s contribution develops an analytical approach that explores the structure-agency relations present in climate- related mobility. Drawing on empirical material collected in two localities in Ethiopia, he argues that the governance institutions engaged in mediating these relations and the different discourses attached to mobility practices can present ways into an exploration of structure-agency relations. While there is a strong presence of the Ethiopian state in the local political space, many households in the study’s field sites do not experience much by way of government support. The situation leaves many households and individuals to seek alternative ways to maintain their livelihood condition, especially when faced with challenges of slow onset climate change. Seen in this light, mobility can be a form of adaptation rooted in the aspirations and capabilities of households, particularly when government is seen to have failed to provide support. This suggests the need for a shift in the policies of political authorities, in this case the Ethiopian government, to see mobility as a potential adaptation that can improve livelihood conditions in rural areas.

Offering a historicized account of the role of governance in shaping mobility in climate-affected contexts, Jarawura et al. explore mobility dynamics in the Ghanian drylands. The authors draw on a political ecology approach, supplemented by the Foresight framework, to document how governance-related migration drivers have shaped outmigration from the Upper West of Ghana over time. This analytical framework illuminates the production of the conditions in which environmental change is experienced and responded to through mobility and the integral role of government actors in the same. The article’s analysis points to the role of colonial labour and development policies in establishing the north–south migration pattern that remains prevalent to this day. The paper then traces the evolution of this migration pattern through the following decades up to the present, documenting the intertwined influences of political, economic, environmental and social change. The contribution argues for the significance of such a historical perspective for understanding the deep-rooted drivers of current mobility patterns. While it explores the role of environmental change in shaping mobility up to the present, the authors present this historicized approach as a counterpoint to ‘maximalist’ accounts of the role of current environmental change in mobility patterns.

5. Research, power and policy in climate mobility

The salience of governance in shaping climate-related mobility is increasingly clear. In this introduction, we present recent advancements in the literature and further explore the role of governance in relation to climate mobility: we broadly theorize governance and its relation to climate-related mobility, and we present themes in existing literature on political authority that can inform a governance analysis. In addition, we present the individual contributions included in this special section. These contributions illustrate the extreme diversity and situated complexity of interactions between climate change, mobility and governance taking place deep under the radar of simplistic conceptualizations of climate refugees or adaptive migrants. They illustrate the need for further academic engagement on the role of governance in relation to climate-related mobility to improve our understanding of these dynamics in practice.

Improved understandings of the relationship between governance and climate-related mobility not only counter simplistic representations of climate mobility; they specifically highlight the need to illuminate power and policy dynamics inherent in mobility practices in areas affected by climate change. It is broadly accepted that climate change impacts and response options are differentiated within a population, with many governance dynamics at play, e.g. resource access, decision-making influence, representation, access to finance, etc. The same is true of mobility, as made clear in this special section. To understand the underlying factors informing climate-related mobility, we therefore argue that it is essential to include an eye to power and policy and how these are constituted and exerted. Such an approach can go far to improve understandings of differentiated mobility practices within a population – a weak point in some existing migration and climate mobility theorizing – and the role of different governance factors and interventions across diverse populations and geographies.

Heightened scholarly attention to governance in climate-related mobility will also be relevant to policy responses and governance interventions themselves. Climate change is already severely affecting the most vulnerable globally, and the impacts of global environmental change are only set to increase. Further, governance responses to climate mobility are already evident – from inclusion in domestic labour migration policies as in Ghana to international development engagement strategies as in Denmark. Understanding how political authorities – states, local and trans-local institutions and organizations, international NGOs, donors, etc. – can support voluntary, adaptive forms of climate related (im)mobility and avoid imposing maladaptive, involuntary forms of (im)mobility will be crucial for constructive, critical engagement with policy and practice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Danida Fellowship Centre [grant number 18-09-DIIS].

Notes on contributors

Lily Salloum Lindegaard

Lily Salloum Lindegaard is a senior researcher in the Sustainable Development and Governance Unit, Danish Institute for International Studies. She holds a PhD in international development from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her work focuses on the politics and governance of climate change impacts and responses across scales. Current research interests include the politics and governance of rural climate change adaptation, climate-related mobility, transformational responses to climate change and loss and damage.

Neil Webster

Neil Webster was a senior researcher in the Sustainable Development and Governance Unit, Danish Institute for International Studies (2003-23). He holds a PhD and MA in sociology from Manchester University, an MSc in international relations from LSE and a BA Jt. Hons. in economics and sociology from Durham University. He has published extensively on governance and local development issues with a focus on South Asia based on his research as well as his work with the UNDP and UNCDF (2009-2014) as a local governance advisor.

Ninna Nyberg Sørensen

Ninna Nyberg Sørensen is a senior researcher in the Migration and Global Order Unit, Danish Institute for International Studies. She holds a PhD in social anthropology and has dedicated her career to the study of global migration dynamics, including the level of force driving regular and irregular mobilities as well as its gendered forms, the workings of the migration industry, migrant disappearances and trafficking in persons. Her current work focuses on youth mobility, climate change, social protection and humanitarian interventions.

Marion Borderon

Marion Borderon is a senior researcher at the Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna. She holds a PhD in geography from the University of Aix-Marseille, France. Her research is situated at the nexus of studies of migration dynamics, development processes and environmental change. Her current work focuses on the ways in which vulnerable populations interact and cope with environmental risks, particularly slow-onset events and how they employ migration as an adaptation strategy.