The climate-food-migration nexus: Critical perspectives

Abstract

The global-industrial food system is both a major contributor to climate change and a cause of widespread human displacement. Despite evidence of the interrelationships among food insecurity, climate change, and migration, there has been surprisingly limited scholarly and policy attention to the structural conditions underlying these relationships. This paper foregrounds critical perspectives informed by abolition feminism to advance a framework for conceptualizing and addressing the climate-food-migration nexus. I discuss the histories of racial and gender violence that have yielded to today's global-industrial food system and its displacing effects, as well as the carceral logics that restrict movement and reinforce conditions of food and climate apartheid. I argue that abolition feminist theoretical perspectives are necessary for addressing the racialized and gendered dimensions of food insecurity in the broader contexts of climate change and displacement, and that abolition feminism opens possibilities for transformative agendas in the realms of research, pedagogy, and collective action.