Farbotko, Carol --- "Representation and misrepresentation of climate migrants" [2017] ELECD 1346; in Mayer, Benoît; Crépeau, François (eds), "Research Handbook on Climate Change, Migration and the Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 67

Book Title: Research Handbook on Climate Change, Migration and the Law

Editor(s): Mayer, Benoît; Crépeau, François

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781785366581

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: Representation and misrepresentation of climate migrants

Author(s): Farbotko, Carol

Number of pages: 16

Abstract/Description:

How are ideas about ‘climate migration’ produced? In particular, in what ways do ideas about climate migration coalesce into ostensible truths in particular contexts? How are they also contested as misrepresentation, particularly among climate migrants themselves? This chapter examines ideas about climate migration, as well as the mobilities that such ideas purport to describe and govern, as performative and praxiographic. It examines a range of sometimes contradictory socio-ecological relations that are creating the conditions by which the realities of particular populations – both vulnerable and bureaucratic, mobile and governing – are experienced and understood. It concludes by observing that when the everyday lives and voiced concerns of migrants are apprehended, a more nuanced representation of the complex context of governance is possible. On the spectrum away from ‘misrepresentation’ and towards ‘representation’, however, it is not just complexity but also agency which must be taken into account.