Tipping the point. How a mobility lens enables climate-related migration research to tackle interdisciplinary challenges

Studying climate-related migration requires research across disciplines. The aim of this article is to discuss how climate and migration researchers engaging in interdisciplinary collaboration translate concepts from one disciplinary tradition to another and bridge their different methodologies and approaches. Exemplifying this challenge with “tipping point” and “threshold” the article argues that while the terms help underscoring the irreversibility of climate change, they overlook the complexity of migration. As alternative, the article proposes “pivot point” which it applies to identify critical shifts in the demographics of communities vulnerable to climate change. Moreover, the article employs a mobility lens to examine the needs and motives that drive people to move and scrutinize migration as an activity embedded in their everyday lives. Reviewing census material and ethnographic data from Peru the article discusses how climate change impacts mobility and demography in two highland communities. The case studies reveal that climate change is one among several migration drivers that comprise both push and pull factors. They also show that the communities simultaneously experience outmigration, return migration, and immigration and that a growing number of villagers become immobile due to rising life expectancy. Hence, even though climate change impacts the communities, rather than reaching a single migratory “tipping point”, they are passing distinct demographic “pivot points”, some triggered by accelerated outmigration, others by immigration and growing immobility. The article concludes that a mobility lens enables interdisciplinary researchers to unpack the population dynamics of climate change and document the way mobility contributes to climate adaptation.