“Climate migration” is now a central term in public debate—but also a contested one. Does it clarify urgent forms of movement in a warming world, or flatten distinct causes, responsibilities, and policy responses into one expansive category? What makes mobility intelligible as a specifically climatic  phenomenon rather than as a question of development, inequality, land, or labor? And how does this language shape politics– enabling political planning and solidarity in some contexts, while in others provoking fear-driven reaction?

This panel brings together Anna Stilz (UC Berkeley, Political Science), Sunil Amrith (Yale, History), and Leah Zamore (Zolberg Institute/The New School) to examine how each scholar and practitioner engages this concept in their own work, and to interrogate what the concept names, what it obscures, and what it does in practice.

Anna Stilz approaches the issue through territorial justice, asking what is owed to people at risk of climate displacement as equal common possessors of the earth. Her work emphasizes principles for just relocation where movement becomes unavoidable.

Sunil Amrith, brings a global historical perspective on mobility, showing that migration has long been a structural feature of human life rather than an exception, and uses that history to challenge contemporary crisis framings and to rethink how societies plan for environmental change.

Leah Zamore contributes a policy and institutional lens, grounded in humanitarian governance and refugee-regime reform, focusing on how legal and policy frameworks can be transformed to respond to climate-related movement in ways that are workable, rights-protective, and globally coordinated.

By staging an explicitly interdisciplinary conversation across political philosophy, global history, and migration law and policy, the event aims to move beyond slogans toward a more precise account of climate-related mobility—its meanings, its politics, and its implications for rights, responsibility, and governance. 

Sunil Amrith

Event Speaker

Anna Stilz

Event Speaker

Leah Zamore

Senior Research Fellow, Director of Global Policy Engagement