Pre-Empting Race: climate change, migration and the future-conditional

Date: 05:00pm, Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Presenter/Convenor: Dr Andrew Baldwin, Durham University

Location: Seminar Room One, QEH, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TB

Series: Public Seminars

This paper provides an account of climate change and migration discourse from the perspective of critical race theory. The central claim of the paper is that the figure of the climate change migrant is racialised through three specific racialising motifs: naturalisation, the loss of political status, and the trope of ambiguity. A fourth racialising motif – circulation – is also introduced in order to account for an emerging discourse which frames the figure of the climate change migrant in more favourable terms.

The paper concludes with remarks on the implications of the argument for conceptualising racialisation in the future-conditional context of climate change.  These observations are based on an analysis of key texts in the expanding discourse on climate change and migration, including legal and policy scholarship, visual and media representations, civil society research and interventions, and political rhetoric.