Call for Contributions: Migration and the Environment

A call for contributions has been issued for a volume on "Migration and the Environment: Some Reflections on Current Legal Issues and Possible Ways Forward." Here's the call:

The Department of Law of the University of Naples “Federico II” and the Institute for Research on Innovation and Services for Development of the National Research Council of Italy are working jointly on the analysis of the link between Migration and Development. In the context of this cooper- ation, and following the publication of the collective volume Migration and Development: Some Re- flections on Current Legal Issues, Rome, 2016 (open access at http://eprints.bice.rm.cnr.it/15914/), they have decided to issue a call for papers for a second volume intended to address the specific issue of the relationship between human migration and the environment.

The link between migration and the environment is not new, environmental conditions have always influenced human mobility. However, the nature, the dynamics and the scale of environment related migration have dramatically changed in recent years, and the complex nexus between migration and the environment has drawn increasing attention in the contemporary international context.

This relationship is not easy to outline for several reasons, including the range of environmental phe- nomena that may cause migration flows (natural disaster as well as gradual process of environmental deterioration), the difficulty of isolating environmental factors from other political, social and eco- nomic drivers of migration, the complexity of differentiating between forced and voluntary migra- tions in cases of environment-induced flows. In addition, from a different perspective, migratory flows may contribute to environmental degradation in the areas of destination and transit, giving rise to phenomena such as unmanaged urbanization or temporary camps or shelter that produce further pressure on the environment.

The complexity of the link between migration and the environment challenges the current legal par- adigm in which migration is largely framed and calls into question the adequacy of the existing pro- tection frameworks. In several international fora, it is increasingly recognized that there are certain groups of people who move for environmental reasons and are in need of assistance and who currently fall outside of the scope of international protection.

The goal of the volume on Migration and the Environment: Some Reflections on Current Legal Issues and Possible Ways Forward is to discuss the extent to which people whose movements are induced by environmental factors are protected under the existing international legal framework, to investigate the main legal issues and the normative gaps and to analyze the solutions being discussed in the international arena.

Contributions can cover, inter alia, the following areas:

• Extent of the protection under international refugee law and the feasibility (and desira- bility) of an expansion of the notion of refugee;
• Human rights law and forms of complementary protection at the regional and national levels (EU, USA, Canada …);
• International instruments for the protection of Internally Displaced Persons;
• The international agenda for the protection of cross-border displaced persons in the con- text of natural disaster and climate change;
• Climate change and human mobility in the context of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and UNSustainable Development Goals;
• The case of low-lying island States;
• International instruments for the protection of stateless people.

The call for papers aims to offer an opportunity for experts, scholars and policy makers, for a critical review of the outcomes, implications and achievements on the relevant questions of international law on international migration and the environment.

Abstracts of no more than 500 words, written in English or French and including the author’s name and e-mail address, should be submitted to the following e-mail address: migrationandevelopment@gmail.com.

A one-page curriculum vitae should be attached to the abstract.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is 30 March 2017.

Successful applicants will be notified via e-mail by 10 April 2017 and are expected to produce the final paper (8000-10000 words approx.) by 15 September 2017.

Papers will be peer-reviewed before final acceptance for publication.