Climates of Migration examines through transregional and transhistorical lenses how environmental and migration issues intersect, and how the disinformation and fear generated by the political instrumentalization of these is shaping contemporary societies as evident in media discourse, propaganda, literature, art, visual culture, policy-making and new technologies.
Climates of Migration offers a transcultural, transhistorical, transcolonial and transnational analysis of the interplay between migration and climate change. The emphasis is on the anxiety, disinformation and fear generated by the political instrumentalisation of these issues, and examines how the afterlives of empire are shaping contemporary societies as evident in media discourse, propaganda, literature, art, visual culture, policy-making and new technologies.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments; Figures; Prologue: Erasure: From Colonial-Washing to Greenwashing; 1-Ecolonial Games; 2-Migrant Ecologies; 3-Ecological Relations; 4-Ecological Frontiers in Literature; 5-Ecology and Propaganda; Epilogue: The New Conquistadors; Notes; Bibliography; Index
About the Author :
Dominic Thomas is Madeleine Letessier Professor of French at the University of California Los Angeles and Gutenberg Research Chair in Ecology and Propaganda at the University of Strasbourg.
Review :
“Climates of Migration is both timely and timeless—offering a vital lesson in history, a revealing lens on present complexities and a pressing warning for the future.” — Dr. Julia Ebner, Leader of the Violent Extremism Lab and Calleva Researcher, the University of Oxford
“A searing examination of how climate, empire and migration collide in the world and on the page. Moving from colonial propaganda to contemporary eco-literature, Thomas’s Climates of Migration rethinks the geographies of race, displacement and ecological desire in a time of planetary crisis.” — T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor, Vanderbilt University
“This superbly crafted book offers a compelling analysis of conflicting modes of thinking about issues of global significance arising from the interface between colonialism, environmental degradation, climate change and postcolonial migration. Drawing on a rich body of personal and collaborative research that has positioned the author as a leading contributor to scholarly debates on these issues, the book shows how the destructiveness of powerful propagandist discourses, transmitted in multiple forms ranging from political argumentation to popular culture, is being challenged by counter-cultures of empathy and holism articulated by artists and writers from the Global South. This breadth of vision brings home both the deep-seatedness of the ills that afflict relations between Europe and Africa and the potential for pathways out of the gridlock that currently prevails.” — Alec G. Hargreaves, Emeritus Winthrop-King Professor of Transcultural French Studies, Florida State University
