Climate Mobilities. Redefining Statehood, Citizenship, and Refugeehood in times of climate crisis

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1285/i20356609v19n3p723-732

Keywords:

Citizenship, Climate mobilities, Refugeehood, Statehood, Uninhabitability

Abstract

The severe impacts of the climate crisis are transforming not only ecosystems but also our political and legal landscapes. Different forms of environmental degradation, rapid and slow-onset events, disasters, and their interaction with existing conflicts and social vulnerabilities increasingly shape patterns of mobility and immobility, thus posing significant challenges to established categories of statehood, citizenship, and refugeehood. This Special Issue brings together eight interdisciplinary contributions from law and political science, with a focus on the Southern Hemisphere, to examine how the climate crisis unsettles these categories, how they might be rethought to accommodate emerging realities not addressed by current legal and political frameworks, and which legal, judicial, and policy tools can be developed to ensure human rights protection under conditions of climate uninhabitability. The contributions collectively suggest that future governance frameworks should move beyond rigid territorial understandings of sovereignty, reconsider the boundaries of refugee and displacement protection, strengthen rights-based approaches to mobility and immobility adapted to local vulnerabilities, address the intersection of climate change with conflict and structural inequalities, and expand democratic participation in climate governance.

Author Biographies

Francesca Rosignoli, Eurac Research, University of Oslo

Senior Researcher at Eurac Research (Italy) and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oslo. Her interdisciplinary research sits at the intersection of environmental justice, climate mobility, migration studies, and legal scholarship. She is the author of Environmental Justice for Climate Refugees (Routledge, 2022) and has published extensively on climate-induced migration, refugeehood, environmental inequalities, and climate governance. Her current MSCA-funded project explores the legal implications of sea-level rise for statehood, citizenship, and the protection of climate-displaced populations.

Susana Borràs , Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Centre for Environmental Law Studies of Tarragona (CEDAT)

Professor of Public International Law and International Relations at the Faculty of Law of Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Spain, where she is a senior researcher at the Centre for Environmental Law Studies of Tarragona (CEDAT). She is also Director of the Master’s Degree in Environmental Law at URV. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on climate-induced human mobility, climate justice, the rights of Nature, ecofeminism, international human rights law, and the protection of environmental defenders. Her work examines the transformation of law in response to the climate and ecological crises, with particular attention to gender, environmental justice, and the protection of vulnerable communities and territories. She has held a Fulbright Robert Schuman postdoctoral fellowship at New York University’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Macerata, Italy. She is a member of the United Nations Harmony with Nature initiative and a member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law. Her recent publications address the right to stay in the context of climate immobility, gender perspectives on climate migration, and the legal recognition of the rights of Nature in Europe.

Federica Cittadino, Eurac Research

PhD, is a Senior Researcher in Environmental Law and Governance at the Institute for Comparative Federalism at Eurac Research in Italy. Her interdisciplinary research examines environmental governance from both procedural and substantive perspectives, with particular attention to the interaction between legal regimes. She co-edited Climate Change Integration in the Multilevel Governance of Italy and Austria (Brill, 2022) and authored Incorporating Indigenous Rights in the International Regime on Biodiversity Protection (Brill, 2019). Her recent publications explore the intersections of biodiversity law and the rights of Indigenous Peoples, sustainable development, environmental participation, climate litigation, and transboundary biodiversity governance. She currently leads the legal work package of LEVER (2026–2029), a Biodiversa+-funded project examining plural, human rights-based approaches to the climate–biodiversity–pollution nexus across five global case studies. Federica is member of the IUCN WCPA Transboundary Conservation Specialist Group.

Alexandra Tomaselli, Eurac Research

PhD, is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Minority Rights of Eurac Research (Italy), where she also co-coordinates the cross-disciplinary research area Gender Dynamics and collaborates with the Centre for Climate Change and Transformation. Her research foci include gender, intersectionality, climate justice, human, minority and indigenous peoples’ rights. Since 2004, she has been working in several socio-legal research and international cooperation projects, teaching and carrying out fieldwork in Europe, Latin America and South Asia. Inter alia, she has been a visiting research fellow at Dartmouth College (USA), the University of Monterrey (Mexico) and at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Catalonia). She has recently coordinated the project ASCEND - ClimAte JuStiCe and INtersectionality: from ADaptation to Transformation, and published on Intersectional Climate Change Adaptation and Climate Justice.

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Published

08-11-2026

How to Cite

Rosignoli, F., Borràs , S., Cittadino, F., & Tomaselli, A. (2026). Climate Mobilities. Redefining Statehood, Citizenship, and Refugeehood in times of climate crisis. PARTECIPAZIONE E CONFLITTO, 19(3), 723–732. https://doi.org/10.1285/i20356609v19n3p723-732

Issue

Vol. 19 No. 3 (2026): Special Issue on: "Climate Mobilities"

Section

Special Issue / Editorial

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