Welcome to the Migration Seminar!

People not on the move: Understanding and addressing climate change and immobility

Profile

Caroline Zickgraf, expert in Climate Risk and Resilience at the European Environment Agency, Copenhagen

Abstract

Climate change is often portrayed as a powerful driver of human mobility. Yet this focus on movement risks overlooking an equally important dimension: human immobility. Many people living in areas exposed to environmental and climatic risks do not, cannot, or prefer not to move.
This guest lecture examines the diverse reasons why people remain in places affected by climate change, distinguishing between voluntary immobility, where people choose to stay, and involuntary immobility, where people may wish to move but lack the resources or opportunities to do so. Rather than treating those who stay as passive or simply “left behind,” it considers staying as an important part of how people navigate environmental change.

The lecture explores what greater attention to immobility means for climate adaptation, migration governance, and climate justice—and how policy can better support both the right to move and the right to stay.

Short bio

Caroline Zickgraf’s main areas of research are the migratory impacts of climate change on coastal populations, transnationalism, migration and sustainability, and (im)mobility, primarily in West Africa. She has taught environment, migration and environmental politics at University of Liège, l’Institut des Hautes Études des communications Sociales (IHECS) in Brussels, and Sciences Po’s Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA). Dr. Zickgraf has also consulted on the links between climate change and migration for the World Bank, the Nansen Initiative, the Green European Foundation (GEF), the International Center for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), UN Environment, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Currently, she is an expert Expert in Climate Risk and Resilience at the European Environment Agency, Copenhagen.

Attendance

This is a hybrid seminar, you are welcome to connect via Zoom or join us at MIM seminar room, floor 9, Niagara, Nordenskiöldsgatan 1. To attend on campus, please gather by the reception area at 13.05.

Zoom

Will be available closer to the seminar date.

If you have any questions, send an email to mim@mau.se.

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