‘Floods’ of migrants, flows of care: Between climate displacement and global care chains

Abstract

This article explores the growing interface between climate-induced mobilities and participation in ‘global care chains’ under conditions in which climate change is already impacting on lives and livelihoods – especially in the Global South. The authors reconsider discourses on ‘climate migration’ in the light of everyday caring practices and adaptive responses to climate stress, evaluating how climate policy interferes with ‘grassroots’ flows of care. Early engagements tended towards alarmist predictions of mass climate-induced displacement, triggering proposals to ‘secure’ potential host nations against anticipated influxes. Recently, apparently more sober approaches have emerged, promoting labour migration as contributing positively to climate ‘resilience’. These new approaches encourage more able and resourceful people from under-resourced, climate-vulnerable regions to join trans-local or transnational labour markets – which often equates with predominantly female care workers entering global care chains. Effectively, this means that those best equipped to provide care in places where it is most urgently needed end up providing care in relatively privileged, less climate-vulnerable places. Questioning the climate justice implications of this mobilization against the gradient of vulnerability, the authors offer suggestions about how climate policy could actually support caring practices in the places where ordinary people struggle at the sharp edge of climate change.