Work

Beyond the normative impasse of environmental migration: From regimes to infrastructures in a Latin American key

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: The article draws on the concept of legal infrastructures and infrastructuring processes in the context of the ongoing discussion on the (legal) framing of environmental migration. It lays out why the entanglement of empirical and normative indeterminacy in environmental migration forces opens the door to a transdisciplinary and multidimensional perspective. It explores how framing environmental migration in terms of legal mobility infrastructures or, rather, of the legal infrastructuring of (global) mobility can help transcend the legal impasse that currently still surrounds it. It draws on previous work on entangled mobility regimes in Latin America, most notably in the context of the Venezuelan refugee crisis as of 2015 and on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the border regime in Brazil. Some of the phenomena observed in these contexts provide valuable insights into the logic of the legal infrastructuring of mobility and into how the environment/displacement nexus might be infrastructured in a region that is one of the hotspots of the climate crisis.

Source: Journal of Refugee Studies

DOI: 10.1093/jrs/feae081

Authors: Florian F Hoffmann, Leilane Nascimento dos Reis Santos

Institution: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro

Language: English

Topic: Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Peace, justice, and strong institutions, Sustainable cities and communities

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $5,024