Health at the Margins. Addressing Vulnerabilities in the Climate-Migration-Human Trafficking Nexus
2025
Travelling through hostile environments: from climate- to state-induced vulnerabilities of migrants to human trafficking.
2024
Recent UK and EU legal responses brought to the convergence of the battles against ‘modern slavery’ and trafficking in human beings (THB) with those aimed at the criminalisation of migration (O’Connell Davidson, 2015). The exercise of bordering and states’ selective powers over who can and cannot enter their territories is de facto criminalising certain categories of people (Bates-Eamer, 2019). This contributes to producing and amplifying migrant people’s precarity and vulnerability, including increased exposure to exploitation and trafficking (Lewis and Waite, 2019). Addressing this merging of THB with immigration crimes becomes even more relevant in an age where migration flows are expected to reach a historical high due to economic crises, conflicts, and climate change. While links between economy, conflicts and human trafficking are widely discussed by academia and policymakers, the climate/migration/THB nexus is seldom addressed. In fact, it was not until recently that international organisations such as IOM (2016), UNODC (2023), and ILO (2015, 2022) started addressing the issues of human trafficking and migration from the lens of whether and how climate extremes influence migrants’ vulnerabilities and, in turn, expose them to the risk of being trafficked along their routes. However, there is still much left to explore. In a world where climate extremes are contributing more and more to the decision of people to migrate, looking at states’ responses to these converging issues is crucial. By taking on this challenge, this paper investigates the emerging links between climate- and state-induced vulnerabilities of migrants to human trafficking.
“Nothing can be changed until it is faced”: elements of social and climate justice for the study of environmental migration.
2024
Compounding pre-existing challenges and risks, water scarcity acts as a stress multiplier for factors that drive the migration of individuals and communities. Human health, sanitation, access to resources, and livelihoods are increasingly at risk, and many are leaving behind their homes to find safety elsewhere. Yet, safety can be hard to find.
When it comes to international migration experiences triggered by climate-related events, securitization of borders, humanitarianism, and migration management result as the most prevalent approaches adopted by the Global North. They reinforce the governance strategies of carbon capitalism by creating very narrow and largely discretionary exceptions to the North’s broad authority to exclude the unwanted, disorderly, disruptive migration flows (Gonzalez, 2020). While international trade, finance, and investment law promote the movement of capital and goods across national borders, the legal frameworks governing migration restrict the mobility of the racialized poor (ibid.). Climate migration and its justice implications are complex and crosscutting. This paper claims that the traditional compartmentalization of justice struggles is no longer adequate for an up-to-date approach to environmentally driven migration. For this, it advocates for the importance the elements of social and climate justice for tackling the challenges that experiences of environmental migration entail.
“Cuando el Rio suena, agua lleva”: a quali-quantitative assessment of human migration in the context of prolonged drought in the Province of Petroca, Chile.
2024
Moving across hostile environments: a review of the literature on the water/migration/human trafficking nexus along the routes to the UK. 35th
2024
Abstract:
Compounding pre-existing challenges and risks, water stresses and shocks (i.e., floods and droughts) act as stress multipliers to factors that drive migration of individuals and communities and their exposure to various forms of exploitation, including human trafficking (Bharadwaj et al. 2022). Responding to severe climate devastation, individuals, household, and even entire communities could opt for migration in search of safety elsewhere, including to the UK. However, the reduction in legitimate options available to those fleeing their homelands, coupled with the breakdown in their regular support networks as well as the emergence of institutional hostile environments along the migratory routes as well as in the country of destination, has the potential of heightening their vulnerability to exploitation. Despite a dramatic increase in recent decades of theoretical as well as empirical studies investigating the climate/mobility nexus (Khavarian-Garmsir et al., 2023), the link between climate migration and human trafficking along the routes that lead to the European continent and specifically to the UK has not been systematically investigated yet. Recognising a lack of attention paid to this nexus within the literature until recently, this paper will provide an overview of the current understanding of the nexus between water stress, international migration, and vulnerability to human trafficking on the routes to the UK.
Migration and Human Trafficking in A Changing Climate.
2024
Linking climate-induced water stresses, migration, and human trafficking
2023
Compounding pre-existing challenges and risks, water stresses act as stress multipliers to factors that drive migration of vulnerable communities and their exposure to various forms of exploitation, such as human trafficking. Severe climate devastation can mean migrating in search of safety elsewhere, including the UK. However, the reduction in legitimate options available, coupled with the breakdown in regular support networks as well as facing an institutional hostile environment in the country of destination, further heightens migrants’ vulnerability to exploitation. Recognising a lack of attention paid to this nexus within the literature until recently, this paper will provide a brief overview of current the understanding of the nexus between water stresses, international migration, and vulnerability to human trafficking.