ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the need for in situ adaptation of future migrants by questioning dominant narratives around the discourses on migration in her presentation. It opines that popular discourses on migration as adaptation or as failure to adapt do not resonate with on-the-ground perspectives of people in regions such as Maldives and Lakshadweep islands, who have been identified as future climate migrants in popular narratives. It questions the tendency in popular discourses to assume a direct cause-effect relationship between global climate change and migration. Drawing attention to the work of Castles (2002), it highlights that estimates of migrants are just estimates of populations at risk. While raising several important questions – looking at migration as adaptation if people were forced to migrate or voluntarily migrated for survival with little possibility to return to their homeland – it points out that migration as an adaptation to climate change can be constrained by variations in risk perceptions, the distant nature of climate change and failure to link current experiences with future events. It further discusses the issues through case studies of Lakshadweep and Maldives. It shows that a sense of ‘place belongingness’ was important for the people in the islands in terms of their identity, culture, local traditions and community cohesion. Differing from the catastrophic framings of the issue of climate change on small islands, it adds that climate change is not an everyday priority in the region. This chapter indicates that it was important to enhance local research capacities, and migration as an adaptation option should be discussed locally. It concludes by stating that there was a need to promote in situ adaptation focusing on local priorities, people’s choices and their institutional contexts rather than simply to foster migration.
