Climates of Migration

<p>Climate and migration provide the organizational pillars and the plural climates in the title accentuates the figurative non-literal sense to signify the atmosphere that is attached to anxiety disinformation fear and violence. Competing narratives and storytelling mechanisms conjointly operate over a longer history of colonial conquest and remain present in the mind-sets informing the afterlives of empire as evidenced in debates on identity politics nationalism environmental racial and social justice. The broad transregional (Africa the Caribbean Europe) and transdisciplinary framework privileges comparative analysis between various disciplines and fields notably migration studies environmental humanities eco-feminism nationalism and decolonial and postcolonial studies while adopting multigenre approaches that include a diversity of perspectives from literature media discourse art propaganda visual culture and new technologies. Together these challenge the criminalizing debasing and often dehumanizing logic associated with official policymaking and propose instead alternative forms of humanization and identification aimed at fostering modes of empathy. Climates of Migration explores various forms of environmental exploitation and degradation especially in African literatures where the thematic transformations that have resulted from engagement with environmental ecocide have contributed to a revitalization of writing. Planetary climate change and the accompanying disruption to the global ecosystem is traced to European territorial conquest and expansion and subsequently mapped onto the contemporary institutional (European Union) and political discourses that are structuring our present while also enabling unforeseen forms of planetary consciousness.</p>