Climate disasters, altered migration and pandemic shocks: (im)mobilities and interrelated struggles in a border region. Issue 2 (4th March 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Spiegel, Samuel J.; Kachena, Lameck; Gudhlanga, Juliet
• Is Part Of: Mobilities. Volume 18:Issue 2(2023)
• Page Start: 328
• Page End: 347
• Publication Date: 2023-03-04
• Subjects: Mobility -- migration -- climate change -- borderland livelihoods -- cyclones -- Zimbabwe; Transportation -- Periodicals; 300.5
• DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2022.2099756
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1745-0101

Abstract

Abstract: Shocks linked to climate disasters are increasingly understood as intertwined with inequities, devastating livelihoods, exacerbating food insecurities and impacting migration economies. Yet there is often a lack of sustained and situated attention to how these – and diverse secondary and tertiary shocks – are experienced in relation to gender and class inequalities, other social differences and underlying forces shaping differentiated mobility-related challenges over time. Divergent experiences and histories of shocks are often simplified, with (im)mobility-related struggles misunderstood or only abstractly represented. Amid these concerns, this article explores the 'mobilities turn' in climate disaster research, focusing on experiences articulated by people along the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border, examining multiple impacts of climate disasters and changing dynamics of (im)mobility converging with pandemic shocks and interrelated political and socio-economic struggles. In this region, impacted by one of the world's most severe tropical cyclones in recent memory, we explore the embeddedness of shocks in dynamic political-economic landscapes and life trajectories. Part of a multi-method 5-year project, we focus on stories where articulations around mobilities, translocal connections and mobility disruptions, including from COVID-19, call for carefully understanding socio-economic ties and histories, land alienation and access inequities, mutating meanings of borders, and factors intensifying economic insecurities amid increasingly severe and frequent climate shocks.