ABSTRACT

Climate Changed is an honest, humane account about the rapid downsizing of the world’s natural resources and the consequences this has for millions of people who, year after year, are displaced from their home countries because of politically-instigated and economically-justified war and conflict.

Based on interviews with 110 refugees who arrived into Europe from 2015 to 2018 and observations of refugee camps, border crossings, inner-city slums, social housing projects, NGO and related refugee associations, this book offers a moving insight into the refugee experience of leaving home, crossing borders and settling in Europe. Briggs sets this against the geopolitical and commercial enterprise that dismantled refugees’ countries in the international chase for wilting quantities of the world’s natural resources. At every point of their journey to their new lives and in the resettlement process, the refugees are victimised and exploited, as there is always money to be made from them. Even if refugees’ labour is in demand, there is a European social climate of intolerance and stigma which jeopardises integration and counters their well-being and safety. The climate has changed.

This book will appeal to students and scholars in core areas of sociology, environmental and sustainability studies, human geography, and politics. Policymakers, practitioners and voluntary workers within the sector of frontline immigration, as well as aid workers, town planners and welfare support staff, will also find this book of interest.

chapter 1|19 pages

Exodus

chapter 2|14 pages

Some notes on the methodology

chapter 3|12 pages

Global capitalism

Profit at Whatever Cost

chapter 6|20 pages

The business of misery

War Commerce and its Human Debris

chapter 7|17 pages

The business of misery

Refugee border stories

chapter 8|33 pages

A formula for failure

Welcome to Europe and the realities of the “new life”

chapter 9|11 pages

Climate changed

The future is already here

chapter 10|12 pages

The beginning of the end

chapter 11|11 pages

Revelations