Visualizing Climate‐Refugees: Race, Vulnerability, and Resilience in Global Liberal Politics. Issue 4 (18th December 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Methmann, Chris
• Is Part Of: International political sociology. Volume 8:Issue 4(2014:Dec.)
• Page Start: 416
• Page End: 435
• Publication Date: 2014-12-18
• Subjects: Political sociology -- Periodicals; International relations -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals; Sociology -- Periodicals; 306.2
• DOI: 10.1111/ips.12071
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1749-5679

Abstract

Abstract : The literature on climate‐induced migration agrees that it is almost impossible to identify individual people as displaced by global warming. At the same time, it is very hard not to see climate‐refugees—thanks to the news, reports, films, and charity adverts that picture climate‐refugees as the "human face of global warming." This article engages with this often unnoticed and taken‐for‐granted field of visibility and investigates its implications for the securitization of climate‐induced migration. Based on a Foucauldian notion of security, the paper conducts a visual discourse analysis of 135 images collected from publications, newspapers, and Web sites on climate‐induced migration. Throughout this analysis, the climate migrant/refugee appears as a racialized figure, a passive and helpless victim of global warming. In turn, global warming is pictured as an overwhelming, omnipresent, and erratic threat, endangering large parts of the global population. This field of visibility showcases a shift from liberal biopolitics in the name of human security toward securing through fostering resilience. This shift depoliticizes the issue of global warming, makes those affected by it responsible for their own survival, reinstates them as the dangerous Other and so bars them from crossing the global "life‐chance divide."