The role of human agency in environmental change and mobility: a case study of environmental migration in Southeast Philippines

Abstract

There has been significant progress made recently in conceptualizing the relationship between environmental change and mobility, particularly in highlighting its contextual and multidimensional nature. Yet there is still a need to broaden and deepen the range of conceptual tools for researchers interested in the relationship between environmental change and mobility. In particular, there remains a need for concepts that allow greater analytical elaboration of the less calculative dimension of migration decision-making. This paper explores the relationships between human mobility and environmental change through a case study of Albay Province in Southeast Luzon, Philippines. It seeks to open the black box of agency in studies of environmental migration by drawing, specifically, on theories of social practice, identity and affect (i.e. embodied emotion). Within a context of deagrarianization, the paper analyses how inhabitants of rural Albay continue to see migration as a necessary, yet often painful part of everyday life that they must actively manage. The social practices lens reveals how mobility is both integrated into a range of embodied habitual patterns of behaviour rooted in the past, but is also a novel practice developed as a response to changing environments, particularly relating to increasing livelihood risks.

Keywords:

• climate change
• environment
• migration
• Philippines
• social practices

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Stewart Lockie, Carol Farbotko and two anonymous reviewers for valuable feedback on early drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Government, under the Endeavour Research program.

Notes on contributors

Hedda Ransan-Cooper

Hedda Ransan-Cooper is a researcher interested in a range of issues including the effects of environmental change on mobility and the governance of sustainable development. She recently published an article entitled ‘Being(s) framed: the means and ends of framing environmental migrants’ in Global Environmental Change (2015).