This week, one of the Society’s journals, Area, has published a new special section, Geographies of labour in a changing climate.
Guest edited by Laurie Parsons (Royal Holloway University London) and Nithya Natarajan (King’s College London), the special section looks at the ways in which climate change impacts the human worlds of work in a variety of contexts. As Parson and Natarajan write: “the changing climate does not therefore mean changing weather, but changing terms of work.”
This is a key, yet under-researched, aspect of climate change, and the section offers significant insights into how these processes play out. These issues are particularly relevant with the COP26 conference taking place in Glasgow later this year, with one of the aims of the conference being to ‘highlight diverse climate change issues’.
Alongside the editorial introduction by Parsons and Natarajan, the special section includes the following papers:
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Solidarity tested: The case of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO-Norway) and its contradictory climate change policies by Camilla Houeland, David C. Jordhus-Lier, and Frida Hambro Angell (all of the University of Oslo)
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Disintegrating labour relations and depoliticised adaptation to climate change in rural São Tomé and Príncipe by Michael Mikulewicz (Glasgow Caledonian University)
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‘After me, all this is over’: Exploring class-entangled geographical agency in a shifting climate among tobacco farmers in South India by Nithya Natarajan (King’s College London)
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Climate change migration in the post-conflict state: Understanding Cambodian migration narratives through geopolitical history and land struggles by Sopheak Chann (Royal University of Phnom Penh)
The special section also has an afterword, summing up its key themes and lessons, by Neil Coe (National University of Singapore).
The section has been published in Volume 53, Issue 3 of Area, which also contains papers on a variety of other topics, including all-inclusive energy packages in the UK student housing sector, the use of protest stickers in urban spaces, the suburbanisation of poverty, illicit commodity chains, and the ethical and practical considerations needed when researching with urban refugee women.
Read the latest issue of Area
The latest issue of Area is free for Fellows to read online, when accessed through the Members’ Area of the Society’s website.
Find out more about the Society’s academic publications.