Sustainability and Social Justice
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Although it is widely recognized that migration is socially transformative, the potential contributions of migrants to transformations towards sustainability in their destination areas are often overlooked in mainstream discourse on environmentalism and sustainability. Here we seek to identify current narratives of migrants and sustainability across individual, urban, and national scales. Migrants are commonly framed in public policy as having no or even negative impacts on sustainability. The study hypotheses that the lived experience of sustainability by migrants within urban destinations differ from dominant discourses and perceptions of migrant populations within societies. We test and document such divergence using data from 21 interviews with key stakeholders from the city and Swedish national level, an attitudinal survey of 895 migrants and non-migrants in Malmö, Sweden; and a media analysis of local and national Swedish newspapers. Survey results show that migrants engage more extensively with a number of sustainability actions compared to non-migrants culminating in new insights on ‘migrants as sustainability actors’. By contrasting individual scale practices against urban to national sustainability narratives, the study illuminates current barriers to and the potential of migrants to play a transformative role in progress towards sustainability that is unrecognized in dominant policy discourses. To tap into this potential, the study emphasizes that sustainability policy across scales should embrace plurality and migration as fundamental parts of progress towards sustainability.
Publication Title
Global Environmental Change
Publication Date
7-2024
Volume
87
ISSN
0959-3780
DOI
10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2024.102860
Keywords
migration, political ecology, sustainability governance, urban sustainability
Repository Citation
Fry, Claudia; Boyd, Emily; Connaughton, Mark; Adger, Neil W.; Gavonel, Maria Franco; Zickgraf, Caroline; Fransen, Sofia; Jolivet, Dominique; Fábos, Anita; and Carr, Ed, "Migrants as sustainability actors: Contrasting nation, city and migrant discourses and actions" (2024). Sustainability and Social Justice. 569.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_idce/569
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright Conditions
Published source must be acknowledged with citation: Fry, C., Boyd, E., Connaughton, M., Adger, W. N., Gavonel, M. F., Zickgraf, C., ... & Carr, E. (2024). Migrants as sustainability actors: Contrasting nation, city and migrant discourses and actions. Global Environmental Change, 87, 102860.
