I have a new paper Nature Climate Change, “Future-making beyond (Im)mobility through tethered reilience,” led by Bishawjit Mallick, that introduces a concept of tethered resilience, related to people’s attachment to their native communities and place, and argues that this concept provides new and useful ways to think about connections among climate change, migration, and adaptation.
Much of the literature on climate change and migration assumes stark dichotomies between migrating and not migrating, and between voluntary and involuntary decisions about migration (e.g., wanting to stay or leave but not being able to do so). This dichotomous framing emphasizes external pressures, thus characterizing decisions to leave or stay as purely reactive. We argue that such decisions are better understood in the context of future-making: people’s broader thoughts and aspirations for achieving secure and fulfilling lives.
Tethered resilience accounts for the connections people experience with their communities and places of origin. These connections can enhance the resilience of individuals and communities as some people stay and others leave, either premanently or temporarily, and they also expand the range of possibilities people consider for their futures.
A lot of the literature on migration focuses on tangible, often financial aspects, such as seasonal migration for employment or migrants sending remittances back to their home communities. In this paper, we emphasize a different aspect: the production and transfer of knowledge through experiences of migration and adaptation to environmental change.
New sources of knowledge interact with experiences of change and uncertainty to create tethered resilience as households and communities imagine and then enact pathways to better lives.