Re-imagining political life: beyond the climate-security-migration nexus

This chapter provides a critical account of the nexus between climate change, migration, and security. By scrutinizing dominant security literature, we consider the limits of both the securitization and governmentality approaches. We devote special attention to the discursive shift from migration as a threat to migration as an adaptation strategy. We highlight, in particular, the limits of conceptualizing the response to climate change in terms of migration and resilience. While the discourse on migration romanticizes the ability of affected populations to overcome state borders, the discourse on resilience tends to naturalize climate change and projects affected populations as always-already able to resist, adapt, and overcome climate change. The chapter suggests abandoning dominant security perspectives and embracing a creative and positive approach, where we envisage new ways of re-inventing the relation between human life and our environment.