ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the disputes over the controversial relationship between climate change and migration. The analysis is conducted through the genealogical method. The Foucauldian genealogy employed in the chapter relies on the concept of subjugated knowledges and proceeds along two axes: historical knowledge of struggles and the insurrection of knowledges. The first axis focuses on empirical controversies, terminological disputes, and political struggles over this emerging policymaking area. The second axis confronts existing legal categories with different climate disruptions influencing human mobility. The findings reveal the persistence of coloniality of power, knowledge, and being, able to jettison human beings and their human rights from the debate on climate-induced migration. While this objectification of the life of the most vulnerable groups prevents the construction of a new subjectivity, the recognition of climate refugees by a broader interpretation of a refugee may overcome such persistent coloniality. Drawing on a decolonial environmental justice perspective, the chapter concludes that this search for recognition and inclusion by analogy in existing legal categories should be complemented with the construction of a new subjectivity of climate refugees within a pragmatical approach to existence. This may enable the reactivation of disqualified knowledges through the practices of non-state actors.
