From environmental to climate justice: social-environmental expulsions and the emergence of a climate edge in Europe

This paper builds on a recent strand of critical social theory – Sassen’s [Expulsions: Brutality and complexity in the global economy. Harvard University Press; At the systemic edge. Cultural Dynamics, 27(1), 173–181] expulsions and systemic edge perspective – to argue that a sociological theory of climate change needs to start from the critical sites where change takes place. To this end, we propose the concept of climate edge as the intersection of accelerating environmental injustices and future climate change vulnerabilities. We use data from the Environmental Justice Atlas and the Climate Adapt platform to select 17 cases that approximate, to various degrees, the climate edge concept. We conclude that these sites deserve closer attention as they signal the transformative potential of long expulsion chains that may define the characteristics of future climate-related conflicts. The climate edge is simultaneously a site of social struggle.