ABSTRACT
Flooding is a common experience in monsoonal regions of Southeast Asia, where diverse flood regimes have for centuries shaped agrarian and fisheries-based livelihoods. The link between flooding and migration is most often made with regard to catastrophic flood events. News images and personal experience of frequent and intense weather-related flood events in the region's low-lying megacity and delta regions in years has contributed to a perceived link between extreme environmental events and mass migration through displacement. The chapter proposes a 'mobile political ecology' conceptual framework for understanding how migration links to vulnerability and resilience across diverse environmental, social and policy contexts. Some warn that framing migrants as adaptive agents can also feed into an apolitical and neoliberal discourse of self-help and self-improvement, without addressing wider questions of social justice and structures of social and political power that 'make' different categories of migrants. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
