This interactive workshop offered a hands-on way to explore media and cultural representations of climate migration. Together, we touched on questions such as: What impact do media narratives have? How does culture intervene in this arena? How do we move beyond the sensationalist and inaccurate portrayals of a world where climate and mass migration are inevitably and dangerously linked?
To enable a productive discussion, we used a guided collective collage method. We broke into groups, and each group answered, with limited and provided materials around a given research question. Participants were welcome to contribute their own printed examples of media representations of climate migration to use in this process. Examples that feel new, surprising or somehow against-the-grain of mainstream representations were particularly useful.
In this workshop, we explored to what extent such media narratives still dominate, what impact they have on political discourse and public understanding, as well as which narratives might challenge them. Bringing in work by writers, artists and filmmakers, we considered how cultural production reflects, anticipates and at times challenges simplistic renderings of climate migration, even while popular genres such as dystopian fiction and documentary film can at times – unwittingly or otherwise – reinforce problematic political narratives and assumptions.
Our aim was to bring together different disciplines and perspectives from within the research community to discuss how environmental change and migration are represented well beyond the academic and specialist spheres and to reflect on the varied implications and consequences of visualising climate migration. The collaborative collage was an opportunity to expand participation and the construction of the commons, creating connections, and multiplying perspectives and differences in imaginaries and perceptions regarding climate migration.
The workshop was organized at the Environmental and Climate Mobility Network Conference (Liege, 2024), and within the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Global Fellowship “PANICOCENE. Reframing Climate Change-induced Mobilities”.
Now Here We Go
First of all, the serious media representation should be more factually correct and inform about the urgency of the topic and the people behind it.
Second, the focus of attention should be on the affected people and they should be given a voice – and not only be talked about.
Third, if the media wants to generate attention, it should refrain from problematic narratives and use a satirical and artsy approach.
Overall the media should focus on representing people of color in a different light and on highlighting rights for all (right to water/health/a healthy environment etc.)
Pluralize & Politicize the Narratives
- We need to pluralize the debate including mobilities that are not typically problematized (North-South mobilities);
- Expanding our visions of what climate mobility entails including more-than-human mobilities;
- We tend to describe certain places as precarious, while people might want to stay;
- Show the losses that human mobility entails (place attachment);
- Climate Mobility is a Justice issue.
Prising
Put your ear here: We’re destroying livability!
Years of consumption (and the lifestyle and mobilities of a few) brought us closer to the tipping points of our ecosystems. The livelihoods of people have been, are being, and will be destroyed. People die and people suffer losses, but they also invent and find smart strategies exercising their own agencies.
Regarding the things we know and the ambiguities with predictions, we multi-colored and multi-faceted solutions based on justice.
To Make What Will Be
making – active, political, challenging: Who gets to make?
what will be? – Future
What has been? – Past – awareness of histories; responsibilities (to whom?; by whom?)
Subject position!
Organizers:
Sophia Brown, Freie Universität Berlin
David Durand-Delacre, UN University Institute for Environment and Human Security
Elena Giacomelli, University of Bologna
Participants: Kristina Korte; Sarah Lohr; Rahul Balasundaram; Francesca Colla; Alina Kaltenberg; Aurora A. Sauter; Ann-Christine Link; Clara Latini
