CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Watkins, Joseph Henry |
|---|---|
| Title | Should I Stay or Should I Foucault: The Biopolitics of Climate Change Migration in the South Pacific |
| Summary | This research utilises Foucauldian analysis to examine the novel climate change migration programmes being enacted in the South Pacific region. The region represents an interesting case as the climate change migration, generally a mixture of voluntary labour migration and resettlement initiatives, are among the first to be implemented in the world. Therefore, the region provides unique empirical insight into the process and outcomes of such procedures with evidence from the cases of Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, The Solomon Islands and Tuvalu utilised to provide analysis on the intersection of international legislation and policy and the implementation at the national and local level. Through this, prior critiques of the practice of neoliberal governmentality at the international policy level were compared with the evidence from the region to find whether such claims were substantiated. The findings highlight that there are promising cases of community consultation and participation emerging in the South Pacific Islands, showing the utilisation of local knowledges as well as resistance to biopolitics which aids in maintaining community integrity, traditions and livelihoods. However, in many cases the native populations are drawn into relations of neoliberal governmentality, responsible for self-regulating and increasing their own resilience according to the needs of the market. Therefore, although the region does not show conclusive evidence that climate change migrations need entail the practice of biopolitics this has often been the case. |
| Supervisor | Nagy, Boldizsár |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/watkins_joseph.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University