The Thacher effect in climate migration: contemporary studies and a corrective proposal based on historical transatlantic migration lessons

Resumen

This research proposal is derived from a preliminary collection of results stemming from a larger investigation into the historical transoceanic migration of the late 19th century. While examining a research subset of outcomes concerning historical migration to the Americas from Europe and other areas on the eastern side of the Atlantic, parallels emerged between contemporary migration induced by climate change or global warming and the massive migration that marked this period. Although quite different from each other, those two types of migratory movements have certain points in common that make them peculiarly distinct by man-made determining factors. If it is certain that climate change was also a determining factor of transatlantic migration at the end of the 19th century, it is also accurate that it was not the principal one. The main reason for these intense fluxes of human mobility was incentives and disincentives created by States and groups of individuals interested in prompting migrants to cross the Atlantic. In the study of those inducement schemes lies important lessons about how unequal access to power and resources leads certain groups in societies to impose upon others, not only decisions that shape the global future, but truths and narratives that create epistemic divides. How current climate-induced migration is perceived by scholars showcases this phenomenon. The inversion of causes and the oversimplification of factors create an illusion of a migration of crisis. Studies in contemporary climate migration have been largely criticized for providing a distorted picture of such human mobility for a variety of reasons. This proposal looks back at historical transatlantic migration from a perspective of the History of International Economic Law, with a politico-economic caveat, aiming to provide scholarship with better tools to appraise this phenomenon.