Session 2.2

Research on climate migration is increasingly analyzing not only the role of climate as a migration driver but also migration’s adaptive and maladaptive outcomes. However, despite broad recognition that climate-related migration is overwhelmingly rural-to-urban, migration’s effects on the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of receiving urban destinations, many of which struggle to adapt to climate change, have received only scant attention. To begin addressing this gap, this study examines how urban planners and policymakers in flood-prone Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s main migration destination and Africa’s fastest growing metropolis, perceive these effects. To this end, we utilize semi structured interviews to examine three interrelated dimensions: migration’s effects on flooding, the potential responses to ameliorate its adverse effects, and migrants’ capabilities and the ways the city can harness those capabilities to reduce flooding.

The results show that most planners and policymakers view migration as mainly exacerbating flooding yet also perceive migrants as possessing the potential to contribute to urban adaptation. This potential encompasses aspects recognizing migrants’ agency, such as adaptation knowledge and planning skills, alongside ‘physical economic’ elements linked with the use of migrants as labor for maintaining drainage channels and their contribution to enlarging the city’s tax base, which may assist in funding flood-prevention infrastructure. However, the results also point to Dar es Salaam’s inaction to exploit this potential, accompanied by a perceived lack of responsibility for advancing adaptation. We conclude by highlighting the importance of adopting a proactive approach to mapping and harnessing migrants’ capabilities, ultimately contingent on cities’ willingness to assume this responsibility.

This paper examines social resilience as a central element of habitability, analyzing the complex effects of migration on social cohesion and a community’s ability to respond to adverse events. While no evidence suggests that climate change has rendered any communities uninhabitable to the extent that a critical mass has migrated away, the findings reveal a troubling scenario in climate-affected regions of Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Thailand, and South Africa. Environmental and climatic shocks are eroding the resource base of subsistence agricultural households, contributing to declines in subjective well-being. These declines are further exacerbated by rising competition and tensions among groups with differing socioeconomic statuses. The study also highlights substantial variations in perceptions of wealth and identifies inequities in the distribution of aid and government support, which can intensify tensions within and between households and their governments. Limited capacities for developing coping strategies, including migration, mean that advantaged households are more likely to incorporate migration and remittances into resilience-building plans. Over time, remittances may reinforce existing wealth disparities, shaped by intersecting economic, social, political, and cultural factors. Thus, access to migration and its potential benefits is socially differentiated, with significant implications for social resilience.

I propose to speak on the topic ‘Beyond drivers: A justice approach to unpacking climate and environmental mobility outcomes in Thailand’s Mekong communities.’

For this Symposium, I hope to present findings from qualitative research I conducted in 2024-2025 that examine the interplay of transboundary hydropower impacts, slow-onset environmental change and climate mobility justice in the Mekong River Basin, with evidence from Thailand. The analysis draws from my work across several research projects, including the EU-funded HABITABLE project, SEI’s global Migration and Mobility Programme, and the FORMAS-funded project MEFadapt: the mineral-energy-food complex and transboundary climate risk.

Context

Climate-related migration and mobility cannot be understood simply as a reaction to environmental and climate stress; it is deeply shaped by structural inequalities influencing who is able to move, under what circumstances, and with what outcomes. However, mainstream climate mobilities research largely focuses on identifying drivers of (im)mobility, often at the expense of analyzing mobility outcomes (Castillo Betancourt & Zickgraf, 2024). This contributes to approaches that overlook how gendered, racialized and classed systems structure differential capacities to migrate in the context of climate change (Ribot, 2014; Sheller, 2018, 2023; Vigil, 2024).

In the Lower Mekong Basin, climate and environmental changes are converging with longstanding patterns of extractive development and land-use practices influencing migration and (im)mobility. Large-scale infrastructure projects, such as hydropower dams, have been justified as advancing national energy security and poverty alleviation, yet their benefits disproportionately flow to urban areas and political-economic elites (Baird & Quastel, 2015). Marginalized rural communities most dependent on the Mekong River bear the greatest impacts including livelihood loss and displacement, often without official recognition (Middleton, 2022; Sovacool, 2021).  Climate change impacts, such as prolonged drought, increasing temperature, flooding and irregular precipitation, are decreasing agricultural yields, reinforcing migration as an adaptation for rural households (Bayrak et al., 2022; Krittasudthacheewa et al., 2019; Nguyen & Sean, 2021). Yet, existing regional and national policies remain inadequate for addressing the cumulative and intersecting pressures (Middleton et al., 2023).

Presentation

My presentation will discuss how structural inequalities underpin (im)mobility, using evidence from Mekong communities in Thailand. This will include findings of how slow-onset environmental changes are interacting with declining fish stocks and biodiversity loss from hydropower impacts to deepen precarity for marginalized households. In the absence of structural support and recognition, these changes are reinforcing mobility inequalities, including feminized immobility and international migration to East Asia into under-regulated industries (Steiner, forthcoming). These differentiated outcomes underscore how migration and mobility responses must be understood as constrained by systems.

However, local communities are not passive recipients of these changes. Across Thai provinces, local actors have developed strategies to navigate these pressures, including engaging in small-scale livelihood diversification, developing informal support structures, and mobilizing politically to bring attention to environmental injustice. For example, community-led research across Thai provinces along the Mekong River has provided fishing households with locally owned data on dam-related water fluctuations, helping them contest misrecognition (Steiner, 2024). While not usually labelled as ‘climate migration’, these approaches draw attention to unjust mobility outcomes. Closing the gap between high-level climate-relation migration discussions and local realities requires closer engagement with grassroots organizations already leading environmental monitoring and advocacy. Bringing their knowledge and priorities into climate and mobility governance is crucial not only to avoid reproducing policy blind spots, but also to develop more legitimate, justice-orientated and durable responses.

In sum, as a speaker, I will contribute:

1. A reframing of climate (im)mobility that moves beyond “drivers” to examine mobility outcomes from a justice perspective.

2. Empirical insights bridged with systemic analysis, demonstrating how transboundary hydropower impacts and slow-onset environmental changes interact with structural inequalities to shape specific climate mobility outcomes.

3. Recommendations for bridging high-level climate-related migration debates with local realities, demonstrating how grassroots initiatives, such as community-led research and advocacy networks, can advance this justice-orientated framing of climate (im)mobility to support accountability and effective remedy.