Editorial

Dr Lars Cornelissen, ISRF Academic Editor

Today there are few topics that are the subject of such widespread, frenzied, and wanton mythmaking as immigration. The favourite wedge topic of far-right insurgent movements, for some decades now immigration has served as the linchpin of an exclusionary nationalism that is rapidly gaining electoral ground all over the world. This process has been facilitated by meek centrist parties who, more afraid of left-wing gains than of their own rightward drift, have excelled at normalising increasingly extremist rhetoric.

Decades of right-wing agitation, scare-mongering, and disinformation, and the centrist facilitation thereof, has ensnared public discourse on the theme of migration in a hopelessly tangled mythscape. Under these conditions sober analysis or informed judgement is increasingly difficult, hampered by a media ecosystem much of which is calculated to amplify scapegoating.

This does not mean, of course, that sober analysis is either impossible, futile, or hopeless. Indeed, sound research and rigorous theory building remain key ingredients in the struggle against extremist drift.

It was precisely in the spirit of sober analysis that, in October 2024, the ISRF gathered a few dozen scholars in Warsaw for a conference on the theme of migration. Intent on pushing back against dominant myths and their harmful effects, speakers discussed the realities of migration, focussing on the causes and impacts of migration, its patterns and trends, its affects and geographies, its lived experience and representation. This issue of the Bulletin collects six of the papers that were presented in Warsaw. It will be followed, later in the year, by a second issue containing papers on other themes discussed during the conference.

The issue opens with an introductory piece by Christopher Newfield, the ISRF’s Director of Research, recounting his main takeaways from the Warsaw conference.

The first contribution, by Michael Nwankpa, forcefully argues that European military intervention in the Sahel has worsened democratic backsliding in the region by propping up dictatorial regimes and kindling anti-Western sentiment in local populations. A key cause of this dynamic, he argues, is that European powers are motivated to intervene not out of a desire to restore order to the region but due to domestic pressures to curb immigration flows from Africa to Europe. Here the real damage caused by migration myths becomes starkly apparent: fear-mongering in Europe translates to authoritarian consolidation in parts of Africa.

Aurea Mota’s contribution shows that migration myths are structured around a reified and short-sighted conception of the nation state, leaving no room for a broader conception of the natural environment. She explores the affordances and limits of a theory of nature rights, which would configure Gaia as a subject of rights as a way of both achieving environmental justice and demythologising migration.

Eric Kushinga Makombe, in his contribution, returns our focus to Africa as he documents key findings from a recent study in Zimbabwe’s Chipinge district. There, most migration flows are forms of internal displacement, caused by corporate land grabs that have seen entire communities uprooted from their ancestral land. This form of internal migration intersects with the ever-worsening impacts of climate change to constitute a deep social, demographic, and environmental crisis.

Rebecca Yeo’s thoughtful piece brings together disability activism and migrant activism, arguing that both movements are oriented towards similar goals and have much to learn from one another. Reporting on a recent art project undertaken with disabled people based in Bristol, Yeo draws out key insights from the disabled people’s movement in the fight to achieve justice on multiple fronts.

In her contribution, Theresa Audrey O. Esteban discusses the history and geography of Rotterdam’s most migrant-heavy neighbourhoods. She explores how, historically, migration flows into the Netherlands mapped onto shifting demand in the labour market before becoming the target of right-wing political campaigning. She ends with an impassioned plea for researchers to rise to the ethical and political challenges of their work.

The final piece of this issue is by Joanna Klimowicz, our guest speaker at the Warsaw conference. She reports on her harrowing experiences on the frontline of the Polish-Belarussian border, where refugees from Africa and the Middle East are facing exceedingly dangerous conditions. Seeking to render aid to refugees caught up in the ‘push back’ fiasco, she ended up bearing witness to an unfolding humanitarian crisis that will forever be a stain on Europe’s moral consciousness.

Featuring contributions from Michael Nwankpa, Aurea Mota, Eric Kushinga Makombe, Rebecca Yeo, Theresa Audrey O. Esteban, and Joanna Klimowicz.

Read ISRF Bulletin 31 on Issuu

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This ISRF Bulletin brings together a number of papers presented at the ISRF’s 2023 conference. Asking where higher education sits in the fight for a green transition, contributions explore new critical pedagogies, identify gaps in education and research funding, and argue that climate education, to be meaningful, must also always be climate activism.

Editorial

Dr Lars Cornelissen, ISRF Academic Editor

This issue of the Bulletin brings together seven papers that were presented at the ISRF’s last annual conference, held in Bologna, Italy, in November 2023. The conference thematic was Climate Crisis, Global Capitalism, and Higher Education.

The papers in this issue look in particular at how the first and third of these themes intersect: what role do higher education institutions have in making a green transition thinkable, achievable, desirable? How are the flaws of our higher education system preventing this work from taking place? And how can critical pedagogies help push back against climate scepticism, pessimism, or defeatism?

The issue opens with an introductory piece by the ISRF’s Director of Research, Christopher Newfield. Reflecting back on the Bologna conference, he draws together some of the main themes and observes that there’s a great amount of energy and will among educators to push for change. What needs to be done is to challenge the inertia of those in power and to build new narratives to replace the conventional wisdom that has placed us on a disastrous course.

In her piece, Athena Hadji shares a number of distinct but interrelated thoughts about the way the climate crisis intersects with and reflects the crisis of Humanities knowledge. What the Humanities offer is the ability to tell stories, old or new, not with the aim to profit or to provide comfort but to reinterpret the world and our place within it so as to prompt change. As the prestige of the Humanities has declined, so has our ability to build critical perspectives. Now, as Hadji concludes, “it is time our voice was heard.”

Also focused on pedagogy is Jane Hindley, whose contribution reconstructs her efforts to design a new pedagogical approach to sustainability, one that moves beyond the Sustainable Development Goals and their notable lack of ambition. Taking inspiration from Paolo Freire, Naomi Klein, and the methods developed by the Centre for Alternative Technology, she outlines what a pedagogy looks like that conceives of higher education as site not just of climate study but also climate activism.

In his paper, Eric Kushinga Makombe develops a systematic review of the state of climate research and climate education in Zimbabwe. As he shows, there exists a gap between the Zimbabwean government’s stated ambitions in this area and the university sector’s ability to meet them. While each of the country’s nine universities have ambitious and promising climate programmes in place, a lack of funding and a prioritisation of STEM research to the detriment of HASS approaches has created stark limits that will need to be overcome.

Addressing the theme of ecopedagogy, Sieglinde Lemke takes us through a number of different approaches that have developed within this field over the last half century. While all agree that education is key to achieving a sustainable lifestyle, the question is what such education should look like. For Lemke, education for sustainability will inevitably fail if it limits itself to training individuals qua individuals. Instead, the aim should be to develop a holistic culture of sustainability, in which sustainable values are reflected not just in consumption patterns or individual beliefs but in intersecting ways of acting, thinking, and being.

Eleanor Jupp’s paper asks how university researchers can contribute to climate justice in their own local areas. Reporting on a period of fieldwork she completed in an oft-stigmatised and under-resourced area of Chatham, Kent, she talks about the very acute sense local inhabitants have of the issues they face with pollution, poor health, and bad infrastructure, as well as of the close links between each of these. Talking about her experience working with a visual artist, she holds out that digital technologies are helpful tools in charting these issues and mapping them onto the local environment.

In their paper, Bridget Vincent, Luseadra McKerracher and Janet Rafner discuss a teaching protocol they’re developing, called Close Reading Climate Change. They argue that close reading methods help students cope with hugely complex questions by teaching them how to sit with uncertainty, have difficult conversations, and constructively disagree with one another. They argue that critical pedagogy can help us to disentangle some of the vexing issues that surround climate (in)action, including questions of complicity and collective responsibility and draw out a number of concrete insights that point in this direction.

The issue closes with a piece by Emanuele Fantini, who explores the critical uses of podcasting as a research and teaching method in climate questions. Building on the case study of the Italian water movement, which in the early 2010s successfully pushed back against efforts to privatise water access in Italy, he asks what strategic and theoretical lessons we can learn from this experience. He argues that narrative building was key to the movement’s success and, on this basis, advocates the use of podcasts in the effort to build student awareness of the importance of narrative, voice, and active listening.

Together, these papers keep up the important work of thinking through and testing climate pedagogies. The broader themes of climate change and the green transition will remain central to the ISRF’s agenda going forward. In October 2024, the Foundation is hosting its next annual conference on the theme of Migration and Democracy in a Time of Climate Crisis, where we will continue this conversation.

Featuring contributions from Emanuele Fantini, Athena Hadji, Jane Hindley, Eleanor Jupp, Sieglinde Lemke, Eric Kushinga Makombe, Luseadra McKerracher, Christopher Newfield, Janet Rafner, and Bridget Vincent.

Read ISRF Bulletin 29 on Issuu

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Drawing on the ISRF’s 2022 conference and looking ahead at its 2023 conference, this ISRF Bulletin addresses itself to the societal impact of digital technologies. The contributions ask how digitisation has changed attitudes towards such thoroughly human practices as education, breathing, love, and consent.

Featuring contributions from Sieglinde Lemke, Elizabeth Losh, Christopher Newfield, Ilay Romain Ors, and Gavin Weedon.

Read ISRF Bulletin 28

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Back issues of the ISRF Bulletin are available to read on Issuu and as downloadable PDF’s.

Edited by Fraser Joyce (2013-14), Darcy Leigh (2014-15), Rachael Kiddey (2015-18) and Lars Cornelissen (2018-).

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ISRF Bulletin Issues 1-25 feature contributions from Marina Álamon Bryan, Oscar Alfred, Sarah Amsler, Simone Arnaldo, Casey Asprooth-Jackson, Nishat Awan, Gabriele Badano, Edna Bonhomme, András Bozóki, Mats Brace, Janet Borgerson, Louise Braddock, Christopher Brooke, Brendan Ciarán Browne, Kimberley Brownlee, Henrique Carvalho, Ernesto Castañeda, Elizabeth Chatterjee, Jacob Copeman, Lars Cornelissen, Annelien de Dijn, Jurgen De Wispelaere, Paul Dobraszczyk, Sheila Dow, Olly Dowlen, Hilary Downey, Leah Durner, Zuzanna Dziuban, Beth Epstein, Olivier Favereau, Arianna Ferrari, Matt ffytche, Elizabeth Frazer, Kostas Gavroglu, Julien-François Gerber, Jill Gibbon, Niall Gildea, Guido Gorgoni, David Graeber, Christopher Gregory, Alessandra Gribaldo, Sonya A. Grier, Steven Groarke, Louise Gyler, Athena Hadji, Sarah Marie Hall, Chris Hann, Anthony Kwame Harrison, Jonathan Hearn, Deana Heath, Susanne Herrmann-Sinai, Sara Hocking, Jessie Hohmann, Derek Hook, Sarath Jakka, Guillaume D. Johnson, Trenholme Junghans, Eleanor Jupp, David Kaposi, Erin Kavanagh, Rachael Kiddey, Bregje de Kok, Naa Oyo A. Kwate, Julia Laite, Tony Lawson, Joel Lazarus, Adam Leaver, Axel Leijonhufvud, Josephine Lethbridge, Despoina Livieratou, Ian Loader, Emanuele Lobina, Mike Makin-Waite, Chrysostomos Mantzavinos, Sarah Marks, Daria Martin, Keir Martin, Lauren Martin, Matt Matravers, Laura McAtackney, Christopher McHugh, Adrian Meacham, Noémi Michel, June Mills, Audra Mitchell, Nina Moeller, Lara Montesinos Coleman, Claire Moon, Jamie Morgan, Jeffrey Murer, Julie Nelson, Christopher Newfield, Pál Nyíri, Cian O’Driscoll, Martin O’Neill, Oche Onazi, Patrick Overeem, Bel Parnell-Berry, Julie Parsons, Maja Petrović-Šteger, Angela Piccini, Murray Pratt, J. Christopher Proctor, Toni Pustovrh, Jayne Raisborough, Manjeet Ramgotra, David Reece, Juliane Reinecke, Layla Renshaw, Constantinos Repapis, Giulia Rispoli, Andrew Robertson, Andrea Ruggeri, David Russell, Jonathan Saha, Gábor Scheiring, Susanne Schmidt, Alice Schoonejans, Jonathan Schroeder, William H. Sewell Jr., Matthew Smith, Francesca Sobande, Charles Stewart, Marilyn Strathern, Sherrill Stroschein, Steve Sturdy, James Symonds, Lisa Taylor, Kevin D. Thomas, Martin Thomas, Michael Uebel, Illan rua Wall, Jay Wiggan, Zuleka Randell Woods & Hansjakob Ziemer.