Living with Floods in a Mobile Southeast Asia
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Living with Floods in a Mobile Southeast Asia

A Political Ecology of Vulnerability, Migration and Environmental Change

Carl Middleton, Rebecca Elmhirst, Supang Chantavanich, Carl Middleton, Rebecca Elmhirst, Supang Chantavanich

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eBook - ePub

Living with Floods in a Mobile Southeast Asia

A Political Ecology of Vulnerability, Migration and Environmental Change

Carl Middleton, Rebecca Elmhirst, Supang Chantavanich, Carl Middleton, Rebecca Elmhirst, Supang Chantavanich

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About This Book

This book contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between migration, vulnerability, resilience and social justice associated with flooding across diverse environmental, social and policy contexts in Southeast Asia. It challenges simple analyses of flooding as a singular driver of migration, and instead considers the ways in which floods figure in migration-based livelihoods and amongst already mobile populations.

The book develops a conceptual framework based on a 'mobile political ecology' in which particular attention is paid to the multidimensionality, temporalities and geographies of vulnerability. Rather than simply emphasising the capacities (or lack thereof) of individuals and households, the focus is on identifying factors that instigate, manage and perpetuate vulnerable populations and places: these include the sociopolitical dynamics of floods, flood hazards and risky environments, migration and migrant-based livelihoods and the policy environments through which all of these take shape.

The book is organised around a series of eight empirical urban and rural case studies from countries in Southeast Asia, where lives are marked by mobility and by floods associated with the region's monsoonal climate. The concluding chapter synthesises the insights of the case studies, and suggests future policy directions. Together, the chapters highlight critical policy questions around the governance of migration, institutionalised disaster response strategies and broader development agendas.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2017
ISBN
9781317645160

1 Migration and floods in Southeast Asia

A mobile political ecology of vulnerability, resilience and social justice

Rebecca Elmhirst, Carl Middleton and Bernadette P. Resurrección

Introduction

Flooding is a common experience in monsoonal regions of Southeast Asia, where diverse flood regimes have for centuries shaped agrarian and fisheries-based livelihoods. From the pronounced seasonality of wet-season rice cultivation through to the rhythms of the flood pulse of the region’s mighty rivers that links agriculture and wild-capture fisheries across extensive wetlands, the movement of water has historically played an important part in shaping the seasonal movement of people. However, in recent public discourse, the link between flooding and migration is most often made with regard to catastrophic flood events. News images and personal experience of frequent and intense weather-related flood events in the region’s low-lying megacity and delta regions in recent years has contributed to a perceived link between extreme environmental events and mass migration through displacement. Such perceptions have been lent authority by high-profile expert reports around the impacts of climate change and its likely effects on migration flows, such as Myers (2002), and in the early meetings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, where it was argued that projected sea-level rise would place a third of the population of Southeast Asia at risk of coastal flooding (Hugo and Bardsley, 2014).
The spectre of flood-induced mass displacement, particularly when associated with climate change, remains firmly established within public discourse (CNN, 2012). Images relayed via the world’s media of the devastating impact of various types of catastrophic floods – for example, Cyclone Nargis in the Ayeyarwady Division of Myanmar in May 2008, countrywide flooding in Thailand including of Bangkok in late 2011 and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in November 2013 – have served to cement the link between catastrophic floods, mass displacement and unplanned distress migration in the public imagination. Yet, this focus on mass displacement frames migration in largely negative terms. Mobility is seen as a failure of adaptation to a changing environment, with both transborder and internal population mobility even regarded by some as a security issue, ‘lying within the realm of the military and the protection of sovereignty’ (Ransan-Cooper et al., 2015: 110).
Yet, other kinds of stories linking migration and this catastrophic type of flood do emerge, and these point to the need for a more nuanced and plural account of migration and mobility in relation to flood disasters. For example, shortly after Typhoon Haiyan, it became evident that Filipino migrants working abroad were finding ways of helping those back home who were affected by the disaster, bringing to bear not only their economic remittances but also their cultural and political capital in holding those responsible for the official disaster response to account (Mosuela and Matias, 2014). Thus, complex and seemingly contradictory links between migration and flood-related vulnerabilities emerged from this and similar events.
Recent influential comparative studies, many focusing on climate change rather than floods per se, have sought to challenge simplistic and inaccurate assessments of the links between environmental hazards and accelerated rates of cross-border and transnational migration (Black et al., 2011; Warner and Afifi, 2014; Adger et al., 2015). Much of this work has drawn attention to the role of migration as an adaptive response, rather than a failure to adapt (e.g. Tacoli, 2009; Bardsley and Hugo, 2010; Dun, 2011). Migrants are reframed from being hazard victims to being ‘adaptive agents’ (Ransan-Cooper et al., 2015): a framing which is very much linked to wider discourses around livelihood diversification where migration is seen as a resilience-building strategy (de Haas, 2012; Rigg and Oven, 2015). Indeed, it is argued that ‘immobility’ is more of a problem in the face of environmental change, where ‘trapped’ populations (i.e. those without the resources needed to move out of harm’s way) are especially vulnerable to catastrophic environmental events (Black et al., 2011; Findlay, 2012). Moreover, strong measures to regulate and limit population movement and minimize entitlements of those who have migrated or who are able to be mobile may also undermine livelihoods in very specific and frequently unjust ways (Tacoli, 2009; Black et al., 2011). Some warn that framing migrants as adaptive agents can also feed into an apolitical and neoliberal discourse of self-help and self-improvement, without addressing wider questions of social justice and structures of social and political power that ‘make’ different categories of migrants (Oliver-Smith, 2012; Felli and Castree, 2012). Indeed, even as simplistic views of migration are being challenged in recent work, the environment and human-environment relations remain relatively undertheorised and depoliticised (Greiner and Sakdapolrak, 2015).
In Southeast Asia, donor attention is being directed towards building resilience to climate change–related hazards (including flood hazards) in rural and urban areas (Bulkeley et al., 2011; ADB, 2011; Rockefeller Foundation, 2016), and this is taking place in tandem with (and in response to) a growing evidence base demonstrating changes to the region’s hydrological cycle and extreme weather patterns that are predicted to further impact on the region’s livelihoods (Zhaung et al., 2013). The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) too is seeking to shape a common policy framework for dealing with events such as flood disasters (di Floristella, 2015). However, for such projects and policy on flood mitigation and disaster preparedness to be effective and socially just, a multidimensional and qualified framing of migration is required.
Given these developments, the purpose of this book it to respond to the need for a nuanced understanding of the connections between flooding and migration in Southeast Asia. Our aim is to complicate simple readings of environmental change – in particular, flooding – as a singular driver of migration by exploring a diversity of flood-migration-vulnerability assemblages. Thus, we aim also to sensitise flood-hazard policy agendas to the complexities of migration and mobility in Southeast Asia.
In this chapter, we propose a ‘mobile political ecology’ conceptual framework for understanding how migration links to vulnerability and resilience across diverse environmental, social and policy contexts. Our conceptualisation has been developed, tested and refined through the undertaking of a diverse set of rural and urban empirical studies in Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia set out in Chapters 2 to 9 of this book. The policy implications are discussed in Chapter 10.
In the next two sections, we briefly outline migration followed by flooding in Southeast Asia. We then introduce and critically review the organising concepts of our conceptual approach, namely vulnerability, resilience and political ecology. Next, we consider flooding and migration as a nexus to propose our conceptual lens of ‘mobile political ecology’. We then outline the book’s methodological approach of ‘progressive contextualisation’ to trace vulnerability in migration-flood contexts. Finally, having established the conceptual lens and methodology, we briefly summarise the empirical cases presented in subsequent chapters.

Migration and mobility in Southeast Asia

A starting point for this book is recognition of the diversity of forms of migration in Southeast Asia: a region long characterised by population mobility, including local, cross-border and transnational migration. Migration-based livelihoods in contemporary Southeast Asia are now made possible by increasingly accessible forms of geographical mobility, including rural-urban, rural-rural and transnational (Elmhirst, 2008; Rigg, 2012). Whilst some migration is exceptional, brought about by economic, environmental and sociopolitical shocks, much movement in the region occurs as everyday practice: short term, long term or permanent, or as circular, involving seasonal movements between different localities. Everyday mobilities form part of a broader effort to spread risk and adjust to long-term livelihood stresses, but they may also occur as part of individual or household aspirational strategies.
Increasingly, livelihoods are conducted on a multilocal basis, whereby households distribute their labour across multiple locations in order to maximise incomes and minimise risk (Rigg, 2012).1 Multilocal livelihoods are held together and facilitated by social networks and, in some instances, are established as part of livelihood routines, for example as reflected in the seasonality of agricultural labour demand. Whilst income diversification is seen as a key strategy for mitigating livelihood risks, shocks and stresses,2 multilocal livelihoods allow people to spread environmental, economic and political risk across different spaces, including in the context of more frequent flooding and uncertainty (Resurrección and Sajor, 2015).
Reflecting the aforementioned, this book adheres to a framing that gives emphasis to migration as an ‘already significant phenomenon’ (Black et al., 2011: 2), rather than as an isolated, one-off response to flood events.

Floods in Southeast Asia

A second starting point of this book is to develop a more nuanced approach towards floods in Southeast Asia. Rather than assuming floods equate with catastrophe, we see floods as extremely varied and can be negative or positive in impact. Diverse experiences of floods reflect in part the complex nature of flooding in the region, where flood events include seasonal floodplain inundation, irregular riverbank overflow, flash floods in urban areas, landslides and flash floods in mountain areas, coastal floods and tsunamis (Lebel and Sinh, 2009).
The experience of these different types of flooding varies distinctly between groups of people according to their livelihood, location, socioeconomic status and level of political voice. For example, farmers and fishers in rural areas hold a very different relationship with floods to those who live and work in urban or peri-urban areas. In some places, floods are beneficial and bring means to livelihood, as is the case around Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake where fishers and farmers depend on the annual flood cycle for the vitality of the wild-capture fisheries and floodplain agriculture (Middleton, 2012).
Flood events can also be destructive, however, in both rural and urban areas. Destructive floods disproportionately affect those from lower socioeconomic groups with less political power (Wisner et al., 1994). The effects of floods can be mitigated or exacerbated by institutionalised disaster-response strategies (or the lack thereof), as well as shaped by broader long-term development planning policies and decisions. As Lebel et al. (2011) have shrewdly observed, risk reduction for some can result in risk redistribution to others.
More broadly, the region’s development pathway has ‘produced’ floods. Thus, rather than see a flood as a wholly natural phenomenon, we recognise that policy decisions and their consequences – for example around urban growth, industrial and infrastructure development, deforestation and land and coastal degradation – contribute to the nature and frequency of floods. This perspective aligns with relational approaches to nature that have coalesced within the field of political ecology that this book adopts. Political ecology points towards the social and political processes that produce ‘risky environments’ and recognises ‘nature’ as a material force (Wisner et al., 1994; Pelling, 2003; Braun, 2006; Collins, 2009; Marks, 2015).
Thus, a second core concern when conceptualising migration and floods is to ensure that the complexities of floods, as socionatural phenomena, are sufficiently appreciated, and that a simple overemphasis on floods as catastrophic ‘natural hazards’ is avoided. Moreover, we seek to emphasise that people’s ‘vulnerability’ to flooding often reflects a larger story of socioeconomic and political inequality.

Linking migration and mobility to a political ecology of floods

A conceptually sound approach towards the multiple ways floods intersect with migration in different Southeast Asian contexts must hold in play both the complexities of migration and mobility, and the complexities of floods as socionatural phenomena. In this section, we outline our organising concepts for a ‘mobile political ecology’, namely vulnerability, resilience and political ecology. Given the plural definitions and approaches in each of these terms, we undertake a brief critical engagement with existing literature to arrive at our use of these concepts.

Vulnerability

Vulnerability – ‘the social precarity found on the ground when hazards arrive’ (Ribot, 2014: 667) – is useful as a central organising concept, as it provides a lens for viewing the intersections between flooding and migration. ‘Vulnerability’ is a concept that holds sway for migration researchers, as well as for those researching the impacts of natural hazards such as floods, and as such, is a conceptual boundary object through which the two aspects of our book – floods and migration – may converge.
‘Vulnerability science’ has emerged as a catch-all phrase that includes a wide range of natural and social scientific approaches to vulnerability, which share a desire to understand ‘what makes people, places, and societies vulnerable to a range of environmental threats’ (Cutter, 2003: 9). Whilst Wisner et al. (1994: 11) define vulnerability as ‘the characteristics of a person or group and their situation that influence their capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist and recover from the impact of a natural hazard’, there have been many iterations, reflecting particular ideological positions and different disciplinary concerns (Adger, 2006). These include human capital or neoliberal approaches that regard vulnerability as an outcome or a quality held by individuals, which contrasts with perspectives that emphasize the processes that produce vulnerability (e.g. capital accumulation, property relations and social and political marginalisation) (Pelling, 2003; Collins, 2009). Furthermore, there are a range of approaches that reflect different disciplinary backgrounds, with dominant approaches including those from a hazards tradition, which focuses on the political economy of environmental risks and human responses (Wisner et al., 1994), and a sustainable livelihoods, entitlements and capabilities-based approach. The latter perspective draws on Sen (1997) to focus on the social realm of institutions, well-being and household assets or capacities (Bebbington, 1999; Kabeer et al., 2010), a perspective that has also been taken up by migration scholars (e.g. Julca, 2011). Recent debate has focused on the ways in which the hazard tradition does not deal explicitly with human agency, capabilities and the role of institutions (including social capital, social networks, institutions associated with governance), whilst livelihoods, entitlements, capabilities-based approaches underplay the materiality of nature and ecological or physical risk (Adger, 2006).
Tacoli (2009) outlines a ‘livelihoods approach’ to migration, in which mobility may be part of a wider household or individual strategy to reduce vulnerability and diversify income sources, including as a response to environmental, economic or political shocks and stresses (see also McDowell and de Haan, 1997). This framing gives particular emphasis to the capitals (assets or capacities) of individuals and households, and the ability to realise the benefits of these, as critical in shaping the shape and success (or otherwise) of livelihood strategies. These include human capital...

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