Bridging the Migration-Climate Divide: Toward Climate (Im-)Mobility Research 3.0

Over the past decade, a growing body of empirical and theoretical research has examined the relationship between climate change and human (im-)mobility. Yet this literature remains fragmented geographically, methodologically, and theoretically, particularly in how it conceptualizes and integrates the multiple drivers shaping mobility outcomes. Despite growing recognition of the multicausal nature of climate-related (im-)mobility, few studies have developed genuinely integrative interdisciplinary approaches that bridge climate research and the social sciences. This article addresses this gap by advancing a research agenda capable of analyzing how climatic and non-climatic drivers interact to shape people's livelihoods and decisions to move or stay in a changing climate. Its contribution is twofold. First, it critically reviews existing analytical frameworks to assess how they conceptualize interactions among mobility drivers, their relationship to climate change, and the ways in which climate change reshapes mobility dynamics. Second, building on this review, it advances an interdisciplinary climate (im-)mobility research agenda 3.0 that gives equal analytical attention to mobility and immobility and integrates natural and social science perspectives, methods, and data. As a first step towards operationalizing this agenda, the article proposes a novel application of Factors Constellation Analysis (FCA), an approach originally developed in health sciences. Adapted to climate (im-)mobility research, FCA provides a flexible analytical framework for systematic examination of how various constellations of climatic, environmental, demographic, social, cultural, political, and economic factors interact to produce different (im-)mobility outcomes.