Twelfth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Human displacement is one of the most serious consequences of climate change, and this issue has been imposing a new face for the New Globalization. Some of its impacts, such as drought, desertification, groundwater and soil salinization, and sea-level-rising, are becoming more intense and imposing migration to some social groups and nations, whose fate is likely losing their land, their feelings of belonging, and their culture. This paper problematizes to what extent human displacement related to climate change is collaborating to a transition process from a world where every person has a place to a world where everyone is seeking a refuge of climate change impacts. The research focuses on cases of slow-onset impacts due to its temporality, which allows us to pay attention to social groups in a liminal condition of having no certainty about their future place. There is a case study conducted in 2017 in Shishmaref, an Alaskan native community which voted to be relocated due to sea-level-rise impacts in 2002, and was not resettle yet. This involved literature review, documental research, and semi-structured interviews during the fieldwork, which enable the establishment of a dialogue between Shishmaref and other cases cited in the literature and the media. With this material, the study argues we are facing a critical new moment of global life, but it does not summarize this moment into threat, tragedy, and insecurity, showing how this problematic issue has been giving not just destructive characters to this New Globalization.