Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

Human displacement is one of the most serious consequences of climate change, and this issue has been imposing new challenges for science and social sciences. 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, feelings of belonging, and culture. Studying this problem, it has become clear that climate change cannot be summarized into mitigation measurements, but it is an interdisciplinary issue that must be considered by social sciences. This paper aims to assess the social science production about human displacement related to climate change, pointing out the extent this production has been contributing with local demands of those social groups into a liminal condition. To do so, it was necessary a literature review about some analytical-conceptual categories (eg. environmental refugees, climate migrants, human displacement), within Web of Science platform, which allowed access to an unrivalled breadth of world-class research literature. The analysis was made in two levels: on the one hand, a bibliometry of available data, showing how significant is the global scientific production into social sciences, and on the other hand, it was made a content analysis about the most relevant products accessed into this platform. With this material the article argues we are facing a critical new moment of global life, but due to social science lenses over this issue, this moment is not defined by a destructive character of tragedy.