Climatised Moves - Climate-induced Migration and the Politics of Environmental Discourse

Abstract: Popular Abstract in English Climate migration has become an iconic topic in international climate politics and policy. This work, combining political ecology, critical security studies and post-foundational theories, traces the changes of conflicting discourses across time and space, and assesses the different forms of security they interpellate. While initially attracting attention as a security issue, visualised by the spectre of mounting waves of climate refugees, it is now mainstreamed and (re)signified in the soft terms of human security. The motto of governed migration as an adaptation strategy seems to configure climate migration as an object for mundane governance rather than any exceptional measures. The exceptionalism of security and the mundanity of governance appear to congrue to a depoliticization of climate migration. A biopolitical government of disordered and dangerous populations at the fringes of capital and development appears at the horizon, once the blurred distinction between exception and rule dissolves.