Negotiating uninhabitability: Contested Governmentalities and securitizing dis-courses of climate-induced human mobility in the Eastern Caribbean 

In 2010, the Cancún Adaptation Framework recognized the need for cooperative action on climate-induced human mobilities “with regard to climate change-induced displacement, migration and planned relocation” (UNFCCC, 2011, §14f) for the first time. Since then, climate-related human mobilities have increasingly gained momentum in the international climate negotiations. Competing discourses, shaped by colonial, patriarchal, and neoliberal systems, are inherently woven into international negotiations on climate change and trickle down to regional policies and agendas with great impacts on frontline communities. Alongside the existing political discourses of those who move in the context of climate change, new rationalities are emerging in international climate politics. In particular, a new securitization of climate-induced human mobility in the name of protection becomes evident.  At the same time, there is a lack of academic literature analyzing these discourses and related governing mechanisms within climate-induced human mobility research. Using Foucauldian governmentality studies as a lens this dissertation aims to explore how securitizing rationalities have emerged in the context of climate-induced human mobilities and how they determine the possibles and impossibles of global climate politics (Lövbrand and Stripple, 2014; Low & Boettcher, 2020). Additionally, I will draw on postcolonial studies that highlight multiple realities that are rendered invisible or even impossible in the mainstream discussions (Santos, 2016; Escobar, 2020; Sultana, 2022). In order to understand how those who move in the context of climate change are governed by these rationalities I first develop a governmentality framework by analyzing recent climate mobility discourses evident in international climate negotiations. In a second step, I conduct a case study located in the Eastern Caribbean islands to examine how the identified rationalities become evident and affect climate adaptation practices in local communities. In particular, I focus on planned relocation projects. In a third step, I explore counter discourses that contest mainstream climate policy.

• klima-induzierte Migration
• Unbewohnbarkeitsdiskurse im Kontext von Klimapolitik
• Diskursanalyse