In an era of accelerating climate disruption, people are increasingly on the move. This is largely due to forced displacement after extreme events but can also be a result of proactive migration in search of relief from chronic environmental stressors. Cities have become the receiving places for most of this relocation. Some have received rapid influxes of newcomers after nearby disasters, while others have seized an opportunity for economic development, branding themselves climate refuges and trying to attract people and businesses on that basis.

As cities grapple with the fallout of climate mobility and try to leverage opportunities where they arise, policymakers and academics have been debating the potential of this migration to serve as adaptation. Migration may be adaptive when people are at least as well off after relocation as they were before. A stronger case can be made when receiving communities not only integrate newcomers but also build climate resilience into infrastructures and services. However, there is always a risk that touting migration as adaptation covers for the failure to adapt in places that are typically marginalized and disinvested.

This seminar will engage with the full landscape of receiving communities for climate migrants while attending to major theoretical debates on the topic. Even with this focus, we will proceed on the basis that migration has complex drivers. Economic, political, and climate conditions are intertwined, and climate may not be the most salient factor to migrants themselves or the communities and cities that receive them. However, climate migration presents unique challenges given the pervasiveness of environmental disruption, meaning that no place is safe from climate change. Climate mobility and receiving communities are real and growing, and they require attention in practice.

Students will grapple with this through two complementary parts of the seminar: 1. A foundation in the field through readings and discussion of major topics and 2. Case studies of receiving communities to be provided as a deliverable to a real-world client. The course will delve into major topics including migration as adaptation, equity and justice in relocation, limits to adaptation and maladaptation, debates over livability and immobility, voluntary and involuntary migration, and immigration and refugee law and policy for climate mobility. Students will put these concepts into practice, conducting case studies of domestic and international receiving communities for the Climigration Network to support their work with community partners seeking to understand enablers of relocation. Through the two complementary parts of the course, students will have an opportunity to be at the cutting-edge of practice while engaging thoughtfully with the full complexity of underlying climate migration challenges.