Sinem Kavak (CASAS’ member) has published this article with Mine Işlar & Lennart Olsson in World Development.
Abstract: This research explores the climate vulnerability of migrant farmworkers within the climate-sensitive commercial agriculture of the Mediterranean Basin, through a case study of Turkey. In Turkey a vast majority of the farmworkers belong to Kurdish and Arab ethnic groups, including internally displaced people (IDPs) and Syrians. Utilising a critical political economy approach to vulnerability and synthesising a decade of qualitative data, we examine farmworkers’ experience of climate change. The findings demonstrate that climate vulnerability operates across three interconnected levels: (1) direct exposure to climate extremes, (2) indirect socio-economic impacts on livelihoods, social and political vulnerabilities, and (3) systemic effects arising from the interaction of multiple climate events across multiple locations of labour. To this end, we introduce the concept of agri-labour mobility systems. These operate through an ad hoc system of routes shaped by labour demands at specific points in production cycles and the minimum income thresholds required to offset the costs of migration. This framework allows us to analyse vulnerability beyond hazard-based frameworks by incorporating the political economy of farm labour and emphasising intersecting social, economic, political, and climate-related vulnerabilities. Finally, we assert that experiences with climate change for mobile livelihoods can only be understood by looking at the migration routes, multiple commodities and locations and the continuity of the experiences with the climate irregularities.
Read the full article here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2026.107329
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CASAS
The Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists from the Global South (CASAS) is a community of Scholar-Activists working in critical agrarian studies.