How are we to understand the role of clima te change in driving migration alongside the ongoing impacts of colonialism \, inequality\, and other defining features of racial capitalism? How is th e figure of the 'climate migrant' represented and governed through emerging discourse and policy on climate migration\, and what do these approaches i nherit from ongoing histories of racism? What is necessary to mount a respo nse to climate-induced migration that addresses the multiple crises and inj ustices impacting displaced peoples?
Join us Thursday\, March 2nd for a conversation among Neel Ahuja and Andrew Baldwin on their respective rec ent books on climate migration and racial capitalism. The conversation will be moderated by UBC Assistant Professor of Geography Jemima Baada. This wi ll be a hybrid event\, with the authors joining virtually. Refreshments wil l be provided for in-person attendees.
Please RSVP here for v irtual or in-person attendance: https://ubc.zoom.us/meeti ng/register/u5MucuuorzgqEtdDqorT8pxSG87N6CjkIIPM
Both texts are a vailable as ebooks from UBC Libraries. Suggested readings from the two texts include:
Planetary Specters: Chapter 1 - Race\, Insecurity\, and the Invention of the Migrant\; Chapter 3 - From Ins ecurity to Adaptation.
The Other of Climate Change: Chapter 1 - A Theory of Racial Futurism\; Chapter 6 - Adaptive Migration
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The Other of Climate Change: Racial Futurism\, Migration\, Humanism
If the predictions are correct\, climate change will force millions of people from their homes\, threatening a future of hu manitarian crises\, political violence\, and strife. In The Other Clima te Change\, Andrew Baldwin intervenes in the international political d ebate about climate change and human migration to tell a different story. H e argues that international attempts to govern those who stand to be displa ced by climate change are as much or more to do with resuscitating European humanism at a moment in which geophysical phenomena like climate change an d the Anthropocene threaten to extinguish the human altogether. Through det ailed interpretations of the figure of the climate migrant/refugee\, Baldwi n traces the contours of an emerging form of planetary racial rule – racial futurism - unfolding in the context of the climate change crisis. He shows how racial futurism takes shape as a political response to the crisis of h umanism that is said to lay at the heart of the climate change crisis. Alon g the way\, he examines numerous themes that are at the forefront of contem porary thinking about climate change and politics\, including the political \, humanism\, sovereignty\, neoliberalism\, the international\, and race. U ltimately\, the book is a plea for scholars\, activists\, and policymakers to take seriously the way race and racism are bound up with the political d iscourse on climate change and migration and to ask what this means for the wider political debate about climate change and the future.
Neel Ahuja is a professor in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women\, Gender\ , and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland College Park. Neel’s research explores the relationship of the body to the geopolitical\, enviro nmental\, and public health contexts of colonial governance\, warfare\, and security.
Planetary Specters: Race\, Migration\, and Cli mate Change in the Twenty-First Century
In Planetar y Specters\, Neel Ahuja tracks the figure of the climate refugee in pu blic media and policy over the past decade\, arguing that journalists\, sec urity experts\, politicians\, and nongovernmental organizations have often oversimplified climate change and obfuscated the processes that drive mass migration. To understand the systemic reasons for displacement\, Ahuja argu es\, it is necessary to reframe climate disaster as interlinked with the hi story of capitalism and the global politics of race\, wherein racist presum ptions about agrarian underdevelopment and Indigenous knowledge mask how fi nancial\, development\, migration\, and climate adaptation policies reprodu ce growing inequalities. Drawing on the work of Cedric Robinson and theorie s of racial capitalism\, Ahuja considers how the oil industry transformed t he economic and geopolitical processes that lead to displacement. From Sout h Asia to the Persian Gulf\, Europe\, and North America\, Ahuja studies how Asian trade\, finance\, and labor connections have changed the nature of r ace\, borders\, warfare\, and capitalism since the 1970s. Ultimately\, Ahuj a argues that only by reckoning with how climate change emerges out of long er histories of race\, colonialism\, and capitalism can we begin to build a sustainable and just future for those most affected by environmental chang e.
Planetary Specters: Race\, Migration\, and Climate Change in t he Twenty-First Century is available for purchase here: https://uncpres s.org/book/9781469664477/planetary-specters/
Jemima N. Baada is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the Univer sity of British Columbia. Her research examines the intersections of gender \, climate change\, migration\, development and health in sub-Saharan Afric a.
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