Moving the Immovable: Climate Change and the Multiple Tensions between Mobility and Immobility

Abstract

The lecture examines the emergence of the research field of climate migration from a philosophy of science and technology perspective. It explores the tensions between mobility and immobility by discussing three specific technologies and infrastructures that emerge from the notion of climate migration and push mobility to the extreme: interventionist policies that encourage managed retreat, experimental digital technologies that promote circulation, and a proposal for a climate passport. It then considers implications of this paradigm of mobility for STS, focusing on immobility as a concept that can deepen and challenge our understanding of a trinity of states, sovereignty, and territory under conditions of climate change and mobility. By reconceptualizing the relationship between mobility and immobility, the lecture proposes a nuanced and refined alternative to the emphasis on motion, movement, and mobility, with the aim of contributing to the discussion of how climate (im)mobilities and Anthropocene (im)mobilities unfold.