Environmental (Non-)Migration in the Face of Climate Change Adaptation

Dear Colleagues, 

Recent debates, developments, and policies on climate change are mainly concentrated on migration and migrants. People who are unable and/or declining to move away from their place of origin despite facing onsets of climate change are thus ignored. Research shows that more or less one-third of the people who are affected by an environmental disaster decide to migrate (mostly temporary), and the rest decide to stay put. The existing state-of-the-art revolves around migrants, their journeys, destinations, rights, and wellbeing. Another cohort of climate change migration experts has challenged the notion of migration in existing literature. In their views, the development of a neoliberal information infrastructure allows people to make cognitive migration decisions temporarily to improve their outcomes, which eventually leverage their capability to stay put. In short, migration has been discussed from the perspectives of factor, velocity, rhythm, route, experience, and friction. 

Over the last two decades, a lot of research and policy dialogues have been published on climate change-induced migration or environmental migration. Concurrently, many projects and programs in similar domains have been implemented and are running all over the world. However, the rationale of staying put (non-migration) is grossly absent, both in development initiatives and literature. Some literature certainly strived to capture reasons for not moving from the place of origin despite being exposed to environmental onsets. To them, social connectedness; community feelings; place of attachment; and lack of information, skills, and capital are the main reasons for keeping people in their place of origin. Following the above discussion, there is a need to explore migration decisions (either migrate or stay put) and debates from vulnerable regions all over the world. I would like to invite you to fill in this gap in environmental migration and adaptation studies by contributing to Social Sciences. 

In this Special Issue, I invite papers—particularly the discourses on environmental migration and non-migration—that explore the challenges of adaptation practices in the face of climate change. This SI is aimed at knowing why and how the migration decisions (to migrate/stay put) of people at risk (those who are vulnerable to climate risks) are made, what kind of role the social, economic, cultural, political, and environmental conditions of the respective societies and locales play in migration decisions, and how these discourses be can theoretically and conceptually grounded. 

I invite original research papers that reflect a broad range of discourses from both migration and non-migration in the context of climate change adaptation. Papers can be based on empirical case studies and/or conceptual work that is ‘tailored’ to suit the environmental (non-)migration conversation in general, and which captures one or some of the following aspects: indicators of (non-)migration; community cohesion and non-migration; disaster and migration; the impact of environmental change on factors that reduce migration; social communication and network, stakeholders, and migration; circular migration and non-migration nexus; trapped population; gender and migration, etc.

• environmental migration
• environmental non-migration
• disaster-induced displacement
• non-migration
• migration
• climate change adaptation
• trapped population
• environmental refugee
• adaptation planning