Human mObility and cliMate change in the European context

Despite the increase in climate-induced migration studies, research on the topic seems to be a prerogative of researchers from the Global North focusing on case studies in the Global South.

In particular, research on climate change, environment and human mobility is underrepresented in European cases, despite the increasing number of small scale disasters that displace communities in Europe every year.

European countries are far from being immune to the effects of climate change and natural disasters and, just in the recent years, extreme weather events have displaced hundreds of thousands of people across Europe. Nonetheless, stories of environmental-induced mobility often remain undetected in the European context.

HOME will contribute to address this geographical bias and it will adopt a political ecology approach to focus both on local experiences and practices of environmental changes and mobility in the European context, and on how they are nested in power dynamics that produce unequal distribution of climate change effects and shape im/mobility decision-making responses.

On a societal level, this can better inform public policies and strengthening disaster risk and climate change adaptation governance.

Portugal has been identified as an exploratory case-study with a focus on the effects of slow-onset events (e.g. sea level rise – SLR) and sudden-onset events (e.g. wildfires) on human im/mobility. The action will be conducted by the fellow Dr.

Michele Dalla Fontana at the Environmental Policy Group at the Wageningen University (The Netherlands) under the supervision of Dr. Ingrid Boas, a renowned expert in the field of climate change-human mobility nexus.

A secondment period of eight months is foreseen at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon (Portugal) under the supervision of Prof. Dr.

Luisa Schmidt, who combines expertise in climate change adaptation and risks with a profound knowledge of the Portuguese context.