Experiencing Effects of the Climate Crisis from Afar: How Does Changing Weather Mark People's Ecological Connections in a Privileged Mobility Context?

How do people experience the weather in places that matter to them from a distance? This paper addresses this question and the complexity that rapidly advancing climate change adds to such experiences. The paper is based on a study set in the privileged context of non-forced migration within the area of free movement in the EU. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Spaniards and Finns living in Belgium, this study explores the potent connections (Mason, 2018) that people feel with other people and environments that matter most to them. This paper reports findings from an analysis that reveals the centrality of weather in people's mobilities: On the one hand, the experience of weather shapes people's relationships with the places they come from, and their desire or reluctance to return to those places for visits or more permanently. Weather also plays a central role in people's desire to pass on their personal ecological connections with these places to their children. At this level, the paper demonstrates the highly relational ways in which people experience ongoing or anticipated changes in local weather conditions in the context of the climate crisis, and the implications of such changes for local ecologies in the present and future. On the other hand, many people with privileged mobility rights, aware of the role of air travel in accelerating climate change, are also questioning the frequent travel that underpins their mobile lifestyles. The paper also explores how people are engaging with the impacts of the climate crisis through digital means, and the extent to which people are able to relate to the weather in places that are not part of their personal spheres of life.