Climate Mobility and Contested Concepts: Observing the Issue Development from the Transnational Perspective

The intersection of climate change and human mobility has been gaining recognition in the recent years, and the recurring extreme weather events continue to remind us that the problem is real. Wide range of experts, from think tanks, philanthropies, national and local governments, security experts, to scholars from both climate change and migration, share this concern. Despite the growing concern, however, the response is scattered at best, with multiple venues providing different diagnoses and prognoses. Furthermore, critical scholars point out certain experiences and narratives of climate mobility, such as those of immobility and circular mobility, are being left out. Against this backdrop, this paper sheds light onto the representatives of often-overlooked actors in the international legal and political system, local governments, also known as transnational municipal networks. As part of my ongoing PhD project, it shares some of the observation on how they navigate existing international venues for climate mobility in order to bring their perspective. Following interpretive research approach, the observation aims to illuminate how transnational municipal networks frame climate mobility and how they negotiate the meaning with and relate it to the existing discourse. Hence, I treat framing as sociopolitical processes. As global policy challenges tend to be felt differently at the local level, I anticipate what climate mobility means for them, as well as what really is at stake conceptually are quite different from the existing discourses. This gap should pose implications for the existing the international system and its presupposed concepts, such as citizenship, sovereignty, or international cooperation. With this paper, I hope to contribute to multiple streams of literature, climate mobility and international politics, while engaging with the discussion of methodological bias in migration policy and literature.