No 3 (2020): Environmental Hazards and Migrations

The third issue of JAm It! explores the relations between environmental transformations and migrations in the North American context from a multi-disciplinary perspective. While scholarship in American Studies has produced relevant contributions analyzing the historical and present contingencies of both endogenous and exogenous migratory flows, the complex relations between migrations and ecological change require further inquiry. 

Since the United Nations Environment Programme’s recognition of environmental refugees as an official category in 1985, scholars from several disciplines have begun to look at the meaningful interconnections among climatic disruptions, ecological transformations, and migratory phenomena. As an example, a discipline that has contributed to the global debate is the growing subfield of Environmental History of Migration (EHM). Equally important is the proliferation of geographical and geopolitical studies addressing the relationship between contemporary migratory issues and political upheavals as a reaction to pressing environmental issues, such as in the case of the Arab Spring, or Central American Farmers. Finally, both literary ecocriticism and ecolinguistics are also unveiling original research angles exploring popular narratives problematizing migrations in a changing eco-biosphere.

With this issue, JAm It! aims to bridge that research gap with contributions that discuss environmental migrations from/to/within the United States from different methodological lenses, unveiling and highlighting new approaches to this topic which continues to sparkle debate and controversy in contemporary US politics.