The Planet and Its People on the Move: Understanding the Climate-Migration Interface As a Socio-Ecological Question

Not only do people migrate—the planet itself is in motion. In the age of the Anthropocene, that is, an environment shaped by human activity, the climate-migration interface has become a planetary phenomenon. How does spatial mobility—and migration—change when the planet itself begins to shift? When the planet is on the move, hard boundaries between nature and culture, ecology and society, begin to dissolve. Migration and immobility are central expressions of local and global social inequalities. Together, they form the socio-ecological question.

This session invites papers that examine movement in the context of the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Of particular interest is how climate change interacts with entrenched social, economic, and political inequalities that determine who moves, who stays, and under what conditions. Papers will draw on various approaches, including migration studies, social and political theory, and socio-ecological perspectives such as political ecology.

We especially welcome contributions that foreground the agency of migrants and immobile individuals alongside their vulnerability. Papers may also situate climate-related migration and immobility within broader historical and temporal frameworks—the Anthropocene, in particular—as well as longer histories of colonialism, unequal exchange, and the dual exploitation of people and nature.

Other potential topics include:

- Responses to climate crises other than migration (exit),

- Commonalities and differences: internal migration and transnational migration,

- Policies regulating resettlement,

- Competing discourses on socio-ecological closure and openness in relation to climate-related migrants,

- The limitations of existing policy frameworks, and

- Proposals for future policies.