Intersectional Feminist Youth Recommendation on Climate (Im)mobility
Why integrated approaches matter: Climate justice, Climate immobility, and gender inequality
Climate change is intensifying extreme weather events and environmental hazards. When crises strike, women are disproportionately affected, facing higher risks of injury and loss due to entrenched gender inequalities that limit their access to information, mobility, decision-making, training, and resources. Post-disaster recovery often reproduces these inequalities, with women and girls facing barriers to relief and assistance, which in turn undermines their livelihoods, security, and resilience—perpetuating a cycle of vulnerability in the face of future shocks.
Human mobility in the context of climate change (HMCCC) is deeply shaped by social stratifications, including gender, class, ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation, and gender identity. As such, HMCCC is not a neutral process, but inherently gendered, emerging from an interplay of structural inequalities, historical power hierarchies, and climate pressures. Research points to four main pathways of climate mobility, migration, displacement, planned relocation, and immobility or "trapped populations," all of which are experienced differently along gender and intersectional lines.
Mobility and immobility decisions can be both voluntary and involuntary, but they are rarely neutral. In many contexts, household and community decisions around (im)mobility are dominated by male heads of households. This dynamic often silences women’s agency; even when women may want or need to move, barriers such as financial dependency, cultural expectations, and patriarchal norms prevent them from doing so. This blurs the distinction between voluntary and forced immobility. When women are excluded from decision-making, their needs and realities remain invisible in policies, which frequently results in gender-insensitive responses.
The dire experience of women during natural disasters illustrates how structural discrimination intersects with climate risks. Limited resources push many to rely on loans or male migration as survival strategies, yet these same dynamics can intensify women’s precarity. Male migration, for instance, often leaves women with increased responsibilities and few financial resources for adaptation. Traditional practices, including dowry systems, further exacerbate inequalities, while the absence of steady remittances deepens women’s immobility and dependency. Addressing these challenges requires rethinking how climate change intersects with entrenched cultural, gendered, and economic norms.
Climate-induced mobility and immobility also have profound consequences for health, education, and social stability. Frequent movement disrupts access to healthcare, particularly sexual and reproductive health services, increasing risks for pregnant women and limiting nutritional security. Girls often shoulder heavier domestic workloads during mobility or when men migrate, which restricts their schooling and contributes to higher rates of early marriage. In contrast, when women and families are left immobile for extended periods during male migration, they face heavier labor burdens, limited access to education and healthcare, and heightened risks of conflict with neighboring groups over dwindling resources. Both mobility and immobility therefore deepen existing gender inequalities while creating new vulnerabilities under conditions of climate stress.
Taken together, these dynamics highlight that climate change is not simply an environmental issue, but a structural and gendered crisis. To fully understand its impact on human mobility and immobility, it is essential to adopt an intersectional perspective that accounts for overlapping systems of oppression. Only then can responses to climate mobility be truly just and inclusive.
