In today’s episode of The Arc, ECSP’s Claire Doyle and Angus Soderberg interview Dr. Yvonne Su, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Equity Studies at York University in Toronto. Dr. Su challenges oversimplified portrayals of displacement by drawing out how socioeconomic status, identity, and timeframes shape experiences of migration. She also stresses the importance of involving marginalized communities in policy consultations and draws attention to local grassroots organizations as pivotal players in addressing the challenges of climate migration.

On how socioeconomic status, identity, and other factors influence people’s decision to relocate in the context of climate change

I think they play a really big role. The narratives in policy and in the media are often very singular. They paint this picture where men and women are displaced without much complexity, and without much understanding of why they would be displaced, or even the timeframes for their displacement. Often, it’s a disaster that takes place on a large scale that displaces people. Yet, we don’t think about the slow forms of disaster, or the slow onset impacts of climate change, where people have to take years to decide if they’re actually going to leave their piece of land, their ancestral homeland, that they’re very attached to. That’s when different socioeconomic conditions are more in play. We often forget the costs of moving–it seems like in the media, it’s portrayed as just “pick up and go,” and there’s no further thought about how much a plane ticket costs for the whole family.

On how identity and circumstance influence how migrants are being received around the world

So, it’s also fascinating how one population [Poland] reacted quite differently to separate migration flows from Syria and Ukraine. But the same population also reacted very differently to the same population from Ukraine at different timeframes and under different circumstances. This brings us back to how we need to have a much more dynamic understanding of migration.  And then again, bringing it back to climate migration. It’s also much more complex than the media or policymakers depict it—people can migrate overnight, or they could take years to decide to migrate. It’s not just right after a disaster or a climate-extreme event. A lot of people may not want to leave, and that’s another part of the conversation that’s really important that we often don’t talk about. Many people who live on pieces of land that they really care about, their land has a lot of history. They don’t necessarily want to leave, even though they are experiencing the impacts of climate change. Another thing that often doesn’t get talked about is that many people don’t want to leave their graveyards with their ancestral burial bones. 

On the unique challenges and vulnerabilities faced by LGBTQ+  migrants as they resettle in receiving communities

There were these shelters where they had mealtime every single day in the afternoon, and there were queues to get to mealtime. They were labeled because special groups get to access mealtime first, and you would have pregnant women, you would have women and children, and then you would have LGBTQ+. We often saw that line empty, even though there are LGBTQ+ community members there. And it’s because they don’t want to out themselves. So, the UNHCR theoretically has done a really good thing by highlighting them as a group and saying, “you get to have food first because we know you face oppression and discrimination.” But in the way that they did it in practice, it effectively just outed [LGBTQ+ community members] in a very homophobic country. So, that’s an example of a lesson learned for camps that might take place in the future–that we need to involve LGBT people in these consultations of the types of special services or circumstances. 

On the importance of policy action at the grassroots level

There are a lot of local organizations, grassroots organizations, and activities happening at the local and grassroots level that we need to pay more attention to. A lot of lives are changed at that level, we tend to have a lot of conversations around the international level and around national policies, without understanding that we need to make the connection back to the local level because that’s where the action is. And without further attention to this level, we’re going to miss some really important things.

On developing effective feedback mechanisms for policies to address climate migration

What happens at the end of a climate adaptation project? This is the work my colleague, Megan Mills-Novoa does all across Latin America. And she asked the question: What happens at the end of climate change adaptation projects? I honestly don’t know, and a lot of funders don’t know because they’re excited to get on with the next project. But without evaluating them and without talking to the communities affected, we won’t know the impact on social cohesion, whether it caused conflict or not, and whether it was even successful. And also the question of success for who?  Another point I want to raise is around recognition. What is missing from climate adaptation and climate change work is that we need to recognize that indigenous communities and other local communities have knowledge that they can contribute. They have adaptive capacity and practices that they can contribute and they need to be centered in all of this work, as well as in research too, and that’s something I’m starting to work on.