Multiple Dimensions of Mediatised Translocal Social Practices. A Case Study of Domestic Migrants in Bangladesh

In the past decades, migration and translocal forms of living, including the spatial separation of households and families, have become everyday reality for almost a billion people. At the same time, mobile information and communication technologies, and especially mobile phones, have spread rapidly and are now accessible for many, even in poorer contexts in the Global South. The article combines practice-theory with approaches from media studies to examine how these two large themes intersect. It shows how the adoption of mobile phones by rural-to-urban labour migrants in Bangladesh is changing their translocal social practices, discusses key reasons for these changes, and their implications for translocal livelihoods and lives

Climate migration is about people, not numbers

It has become increasingly common to argue that climate change will lead to mass migrations. In this chapter, we examine the large numbers often invoked to underline alarming climate migration narratives. We outline the methodological limitations to their production. We argue for a greater diversity of knowledges about climate migration, rooted in qualitative and mixed methods. We also question the usefulness of numbers to progressive agendas for climate action. Large numbers are used for rhetorical effect to create fear of climate migration, but this approach backfires when they are used to justify security-oriented, anti-migrant agendas. In addition, quantification helps present migration as a management problem with decisions based on meeting quantitative targets, instead of prioritising peoples’ needs, rights, and freedoms

Research priorities for climate mobility

The escalating impacts of climate change on the movement and immobility of people, coupled with false but influential narratives of mobility, highlight an urgent need for nuanced and synthetic research around climate mobility. Synthesis of evidence and gaps across the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report highlight a need to clarify the understanding of what conditions make human mobility an effective adaptation option and its nuanced outcomes, including simultaneous losses, damages, and benefits. Priorities include integration of adaptation and development planning; involuntary immobility and vulnerability; gender; data for cities; risk from responses and maladaptation; public understanding of climate risk; transboundary, compound, and cascading risks; nature-based approaches; and planned retreat, relocation, and heritage. Cutting across these priorities, research modalities need to better position climate mobility as type of mobility, as process, and as praxis. Policies and practices need to reflect the diverse needs, priorities, and experiences of climate mobility, emphasizing capability, choice, and freedom of movement

Direct Income Support and Cross-compliance

Stimulated by the switch away from price support in the early 1990s (the Mac Sharry reform), direct income payments have now become the central policy tool in EU agriculture. More than 70 per cent of the common agricultural practices (CAP) budget is now accounted for by these ‘single’ payments, which are largely decoupled from production. To receive these payments, farmers are required to comply with minimal ‘cross-compliance’ standards related to food safety, hygiene, the environment, animal welfare, and land management. On the basis of a review of both the payment scheme and the cross-compliance conditions, it is argued that further reform could make the system more targeted. This not only concerns the income support objective but also agriculture’s contribution to the provisioning of public goods and green services

Climate migration myths

Misleading claims about mass migration induced by climate change continue to surface in both academia and policy. This requires a new research agenda on ‘climate mobilities’ that moves beyond simplistic assumptions and more accurately advances knowledge of the nexus between human mobility and climate change

Mobile phone data for informing public health actions across the COVID-19 pandemic life cycle

This paper describes how mobile phone data can guide government and public health authorities in determining the best course of action to control the COVID-19 pandemic and in assessing the effectiveness of control measures such as physical distancing. It identifies key gaps and reasons why this kind of data is only scarcely used, although their value in similar epidemics has proven in a number of use cases. It presents ways to overcome these gaps and key recommendations for urgent action, most notably the establishment of mixed expert groups on national and regional level, and the inclusion and support of governments and public authorities early on. It is authored by a group of experienced data scientists, epidemiologists, demographers and representatives of mobile network operators who jointly put their work at the service of the global effort to combat the COVID-19 pandemic