Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Tabea Bork-Hüffer, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

ABSTRACT

Much attention in the debate on environmental migration has been given to climate change as a push factor contributing to migration, and to the potential conflicts and humanitarian crises that may result. Policy recommendations tend to focus on adaptation measures that prevent or reduce migration, since migration is usually considered as a problem or a threat. The paper offers a fresh perspective on the climate change-migration nexus. It starts from the assumption that, regardless of the projected environmental changes, migration is already a major dynamic of global change. Migration is connecting people, transforming places, and facilitating flows of knowledge and resources, and thus creating networked and interconnected translocal spaces. Through this intensifying translocal connectedness, the ability of households and communities to respond to climatic risks and sustain their livelihoods and well-being – that is, their social resilience – has the potential to be strengthened.

The paper has two objectives. First, it will present empirical results from research carried out in rural upland communities in Thailand within the framework of the UNU-EHS-led “Rainfalls Project”. While we observed that households are exposed to various environmental stresses, migration is not considered as a primary risk mitigation strategy. Nevertheless, the empirical evidence point to feedback effects of migration through which the capacities of exposed households to cope and adapt to environmental risks is strengthened. Second, the paper will outline the research design of the ongoing project “Building resilience through translocality. Climate change, migration and social resilience of rural communities in Thailand (TransRe)” which applies a translocal perspective to get an in-depth understanding of the relation between migration and social resilience.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Patrick Sakdapolrak is Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Geography, University of Bonn, Germany. He is primarily concerned with the question of how vulnerable groups live with risk. Dr Sakdapolrak is particularly interested in how people cope with and adapt to environmental and social stresses. The role of migration and translocal strategies within this context features centrally in his research (e. g. Sakdapolrak 2008, Sakdapolrak et al. 2013). He has worked on the conceptual development of social vulnerability (Sakdapolrak 2010), livelihoods (Sakdapolrak forthcoming) and social resilience (Keck & Sakdapolrak 2013) approaches, as well as migration (Etzold and Sakdapolrak 2012) and translocality (Greiner and Sakdapolrak 2013a, b). For his PhD thesis on health vulnerability among poor urban groups in India, carried out in the Department of Geography in Bonn, he was awarded a special prize for excellent practice-relevant research in the field of development studies (the KfW-Förderpreis). In 2013 he had a temporary professorship for social geography and sustainability research at the LMU in Munich. Since October 2013 he is leading a Junior Research Group on Migration and Environment in Bonn.

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. We would greatly appreciate if you RSVP Sharon via email: arios@nus.edu.sg