1st Edition

Living with Floods in a Mobile Southeast Asia A Political Ecology of Vulnerability, Migration and Environmental Change

    202 Pages 49 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    216 Pages 49 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between migration, vulnerability, resilience and social justice associated with flooding across diverse environmental, social and policy contexts in Southeast Asia. It challenges simple analyses of flooding as a singular driver of migration, and instead considers the ways in which floods figure in migration-based livelihoods and amongst already mobile populations.

    The book develops a conceptual framework based on a ‘mobile political ecology’ in which particular attention is paid to the multidimensionality, temporalities and geographies of vulnerability. Rather than simply emphasising the capacities (or lack thereof) of individuals and households, the focus is on identifying factors that instigate, manage and perpetuate vulnerable populations and places: these include the sociopolitical dynamics of floods, flood hazards and risky environments, migration and migrant-based livelihoods and the policy environments through which all of these take shape.

    The book is organised around a series of eight empirical urban and rural case studies from countries in Southeast Asia, where lives are marked by mobility and by floods associated with the region’s monsoonal climate. The concluding chapter synthesises the insights of the case studies, and suggests future policy directions. Together, the chapters highlight critical policy questions around the governance of migration, institutionalised disaster response strategies and broader development agendas.

    Chapter 1: Migration and floods in Southeast Asia: A mobile political ecology of vulnerability, resilience and social justice

    Rebecca Elmhirst, Carl Middleton and Bernadette P. Resurrección

    Chapter 2: Living with the flood: A political ecology of fishing, farming, and migration around Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia

    Carl Middleton and Borin Un

    Chapter 3: Migrants seeking out and living with floods: A case study of Mingalar Kwet Thet settlement, Yangon, Myanmar

    Maxime Boutry

    Chapter 4: Risky spaces, vulnerable households, and mobile lives in Laos: Quo vadis flooding and migration?

    Albert Salamanca, Outhai Soukkhy, Joshua Rigg and Jacqueline Ernerot

    Chapter 5: Living with and against floods in Bangkok and Thailand’s central plain

    Naruemon Thabchumpon and Narumon Arunotai

    Chapter 6: Generating Vulnerability to Floods: Poor Urban Migrants and the State in Metro Manila, Philippines

    Edsel E. Sajor and Bernadette P. Resurrección

    Chapter 7: Responses to Flooding: Migrants’ Perspectives in Hanoi, Vietnam

    Nguyen Tuan Anh and Pham Quang Minh

    Chapter 8: Flooding in a city of migrants: ethnicity and entitlement in Bandar Lampung, Indonesia

    Rebecca Elmhirst and Ari Darmastuti

    Chapter 9: Vulnerabilities of Local People and Migrants due to Flooding in Malaysia: Identifying Gaps for Better Management

    Mohammad Imam Hasan Reza, Er Ah Choy and Joy Jacqueline Pereira

    Chapter 10: Floods and migrants: Synthesis and implications for policy

    Louis Lebel, Supang Chantavanich and Werasit Sittitrai

    Biography

    Carl Middleton is Assistant Professor and Director of the Center for Social Development Studies in the Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.

    Rebecca Elmhirst is Reader in Human Geography and Deputy Head of the School of Environment and Technology at the University of Brighton, UK.

    Supang Chantavanich is Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Political Science, Institute of Asian Studies, and adviser to the Asian Research Center for Migration, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.