10.6092/issn.2038-3460/18772
Commentary to the Lecture “Moving the immovable: Climate change and the multiple tensions between mobility and immobility”, by Huub Dijstelbloem (this issue).
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2038-3460
18772
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Annalisa Pelizza
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
inertia
On Causality, the Modern Contract and Inertia in “Climate Migration”
Text.Serial.Journal
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Commentary
2024-01-16
2023-12-18
2024-01-16
2024-01-16
69-72
TS
Annalisa Pelizza
2023
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/18772
69
University of Bologna, University of Aarhus
2038-3460
2
inertia
en
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On Causality, the Modern Contract and Inertia in “Climate Migration”
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/18772/17231
14
T/S                                                                                                                            COMMENTARY



                                 On Causality, the Modern Contract and Inertia in “Climate
                                 Migration”

                                 Annalisa Pelizza
                                 University of Bologna and University of Aarhus

                                 Corresponding author                  Abstract
                                 Annalisa Pelizza                      Commentary to the Lecture “Moving the immovable: Climate change and
                                 University of Bologna, Department     the multiple tensions between mobility and immobility”, by Huub Dijstel-
                                 of Philosophy and Communication       bloem (this issue).
                                 Via Zamboni 38, 40126 Bologna
                                    annalisa.pelizza2@unibo.it         Keywords
                                                                       climate migration; causality; modern contract; denationalization; (im)mo-
                                 Submitted: October 30, 2023           bility; inertia.
                                 Accepted: December 20, 2023




                                    When first listening to Huub Dijstelbloem’s keynote lecture, I was enticed to read his contri-
                                 bution about “climate migration” as an attempt to expose STS’ tendency to stress contingency
                                 and what he calls a “mobility bias”. After all, what more intrinsically mobility-biased than re-
                                 placing a sociology of the social with a sociology of associations (Latour 2005), which requires
                                 following the movement of an element from one assemblage to another? Dijstelbloem indeed
                                 proposes to advance the political theory component of STS, and resorts to established social
                                 science conceptualizations of state and structure.
                                    Yet more than to an opposition, Dijstelbloem is pointing to a constitutive trait of STS,
                                 at least since when in 1981 Aaron Cicourel and Karin Knorr-Cetina included representa-
                                 tives from the field in their edited book on the integration of micro- and macro-sociologies
                                 (Cicourel and Knorr-Cetina 1981). Explaining both transformation and durability has been
                                 a non-secondary goal in STS scholarship, as much as sidelining determinism has been. More
                                 recently, STS attempts to problematize the co-constitution of emergency and stability have
                                 emerged from the dialogue with neighboring disciplines. In their introduction to a special
                                 issue on “scripts of security”, for example, Aradau and Pelizza (forthcoming) show how con-
                                 tingency and obduracy represent two extremes capable of productively articulate (in)security.
                                 Similarly, the relationships between what is mobile and what remains immobile is for Dijstel-
                                 bloem productive of a nuanced and refined understanding of “climate migration”, despite
                                 the shortcuts entailed by this formulation, which he attentively addresses.
                                    I agree with Dijstelbloem that “climate migration” constitutes a slippery concept that nev-
                                 ertheless needs to be retained and investigated. This is true of policy discourse, where in the
                                 last two decades resistances to linking desertification with migration have revealed the vested

tudiesogySchnl &TfiaJurtCNOSIEZA.                                                                            © The Author(s) 2023
                                 14(2)p.69-72ISN038-3460                                                     Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
                                          DOI:10.692/isn38-/18723460                                         www.tecnoscienza.net
Pelizza                                                                                             70

interests of nation states. The efforts the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertifica-
tion (UNCCD) has put in foregrounding such nexus were not detached from a political mis-
sion. At the very least, talking of “climate migrants” allows opening up the narrative which
is usually focused on the unrealistic concept of “economic migrant”. It shows that not only
poor people move, but also those hit by climate change. Although the two populations may
overlap to a great extent, I suggest that the two diverse framings involve different distributions
of responsibilities: while poverty in many cultures may be imputed to individuals, climate
change is by definition a phenomenon to be attributed to collective choices.
   And yet the concept of “climate migration” has value not only at the policy level, but also as an
analytical lens and theoretical formulation, as I will try to argue in what follows. I see three reasons
why climate migration can constitute a key object of study (and provocation) for the STS com-
munity. First, it revitalizes one of the original concerns of STS: the multiplicity of relationships,
which cannot be reduced to direct causality. Second, given its capability to show that nation states
have not lived up to their responsibilities, climate migration constitutes a powerful evidence of de-
nationalization and questions the modern contract between science and society. Third, immobil-
ity in climate migration can be framed in a novel light by interrogating the STS notion of inertia.
   First, as Dijstelbloem suggests, composite terms imply a relationship which is usually assumed
to be causal. When it comes to climate migration, climate change is supposed to trigger mobil-
ity. I suggest that it is exactly this direct, deterministic relationship, this short chain of action
that produces the collective anxiety about climate migration that Dijstelbloem describes in his
contribution: an input (climate change) will without fail produce a well-defined output (mass
migration). Hence the securitization of climate change, that can be conceived of as an anxious
reaction to a deterministic relationship. To avoid the short-cuts of determinism Dijstelbloem
resorts to multi-factoriality, which is indeed one way to escape direct causality. As he suggests,
“climate change is not an independent driver but part of an assemblage of life circumstances,
development, environmental conditions, state governance, and international relations”.
   While I agree with this interpretation, I would like to suggest a further way out of determin-
ism, drawn from the STS toolkit: focusing on the specificities of the mediators. It is necessary to
unpack both the black boxes of “climate change” and “migration” to follow the minute details
of how their relationship is built, the mediators that come into the equation, and the multiple
directions in which the relationship could unfold. How do mediators like infrastructures, regu-
lations, family networks, expectations, media discourses, colonial imaginaries, period of life in-
tervene in the meaning given to climate change, as well as in the decision to move or to stay? Do
they support, facilitate or discourage and hamper mobility? Asking these questions would facil-
itate to avoid determinism – and the related anxiety – by acknowledging the multiple, invisible,
more-than-human forms of agencies mediating the relationship between climate and migration.
   The second reason why climate migration can open new fields of inquiry for the STS com-
munity has to do with responsibility. Dijstelbloem discusses climate migration as a field of
study, a repertoire of technologies and a space for international political action. All these three
aspects hold together: climate migration entails new methods to produce knowledge about an
emerging phenomenon, new technologies to deal with it, and new alliances between global
actors. At the same time, this speaks for a novel relationship between climate migration and
responsibility. Who and what is to be held responsible for climate migration, how are they ex-
71                                                                         Tecnoscienza. 2023. 14(2)

pected to deploy technologies, and towards which desirable new future alliances? Dijstelbloem
provides a scant hint in this direction when he writes that “if there was an intended monopoly
by the nation state, climate change puts pressure on the right to control people’s movements
from all sides”. He seems to suggest that nation states’ monopoly in controlling mobility could
be jeopardized by their lack of responsibility in curbing climate change.
   Even more explicitly, I suggest that climate change shows that states cannot morally claim a
monopoly of mobility over territory because they have not been able to assure livable condi-
tions in those same territories. They were expected to be responsible for territories according
to the modern contract (Mukerji 2011; Sassen 2006), and yet have not been. Therefore, they
could be seen as having lost monopoly over mobility to, in and across those territories. Cli-
mate change, in other words, by showing that Hobbes’ king is naked, constitutes a powerful
evidence of denationalization.
   More precisely, climate change is evidence of denationalization because it questions the
modern contract between nation-states, human beings, science and capital. We know that
such IXX century contract was grounded on colonial and homeland exploitation of na-
ture. This contract was in turn based on the XVII century epistemological division of la-
bor between politics and science, with the first in charge of moral, economics, rhetorics and
religion, and the second in charge of nature, machines, engines (Rip 2014). In both cases,
science and technology were free to experiment insofar as their outcomes could contribute
to advance the progress of society, and did not mingle with politics and religion. It is also
important noting that in this division of labor, in this contract, nature was not included as
an active agent, but silenced as mere reservoir of value.
   Now, climate change is showing that this contract is shaking, as nation states have not lived
up to their responsibilities over territory. Of course, they were not alone, and science and capi-
tal have made their part, but still nation states were the ones constitutionally responsible for the
livability of their territories (Sassen 2006). On top of that, nature is pressing to be emancipated
from its role of mere reservoir of value and be included in the contract. And yet in STS we
know that adding a part to a contract is not a painless process. If a further agent is involved, the
whole network, in this case the whole contract, must be renegotiated. This includes a renegoti-
ation of the identity, roles and responsibilities of the other actors already involved. If states have
not been responsible towards their territories and nature pushes to enter the contract, then also
the roles, responsibilities and identities of society, capital and science have to be renegotiated.
   This is where mobility kicks-in: if nature presses to be included and humans and non-hu-
mans are not bounded anymore to the modern contract – if they feel they have been betrayed
by irresponsible states who failed to assure livable conditions in their territories, then they feel
they have a right to establish other types of contracts. We have seen it with viruses and the
recent pandemic. We see it with mobility and climate migration: people are seeking contracts
with other, more suitable assemblages. Then the question is: who and what is signing new
contracts with whom? On the basis of which living needs? Is any regulation possible – any new
contract redistributing roles and responsibilities, and in case, on the basis of which criteria?
   While there is no easy answer to these questions, an observation is possible. Accounts of cli-
mate mobility often resort to asymmetrical narratives. Viruses jump from one host to another.
Humans are seen as individuals longing to reach a new state, a new polity, a new society. In both
Pelizza                                                                                                   72

cases, accounts are asymmetrical in that they oppose mobile individuals (i.e., the threatening
guests) to immobile collective entities (i.e., the vulnerable hosts). Dijstelbloem lecture is insight-
ful in that it problematizes this asymmetry and all too easy semi-symbolism between mobility
as a threat and immobility as vulnerability. His argument that we need a more conceptually
refined understanding between mobility and immobility to deal with the challenges of climate
migration in this light is to the point. Schewel’s proposal of four categories of mobility/immo-
bility, including voluntary immobility and acquiescent immobility, is to be appreciated, as well.
   This appreciation eventually leads to the third reason why STS might enter a dialogue with
the ambivalent concept of climate migration. I suggest that STS can offer a strategic concept
to pursue the refinement of immobility: the concept of inertia. That we should not fully
overlap the onto-epistemic dimension of becoming with the spatial dimension of mobility
becomes clear once we take inertia into account. In STS, inertia cannot be taken for granted.
Assemblages, social actors, organizations are not endowed with some inertia, but need to be
constantly kept up by group-making efforts. If they are not performed, they stop existing.
Inertia, durability, stability, obduracy can only be explained by appealing to technologies,
artefacts, infrastructures that crystallize change into material-semiotic assemblages.
   In this view, both the mobile and the immobile can be considered as outcomes of efforts
to counteract inertia. Immobility too requires the expensive deployment of means to keep
things immobile, to counter the decay that would come with lack of action. Consequently,
the question about immobility transcends the semi-symbolism between a threatening mo-
bility and a vulnerable immobility. The questions about immobility concern how people
can organize their immobility; at what costs; through which means; how those costs can be
compared to the costs and means of mobility. Dijstelbloem seems to imply something along
these lines when he states that “it is interesting to see […] what specific configuration of mo-
bility and immobility is developed in the research field” of climate migration. Studying such
configuration through the STS notion of inertia could help to make further novel steps in
the foundational discussion between contingency and stability. Eventually, STS could even
contribute to the study of immobility through its performative approach.


References

Aradau, Claudia and Pelizza, Annalisa (forthcoming) Introduction to the special issue on scripts of security,
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Latour, Bruno (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, Oxford and
   New York, Oxford University Press.
Mukerji, Chandra (2011) Jurisdiction, inscription, and state formation: Administrative modernism and
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