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Hedda Ransan-Cooper, PhD Candidate, School of Sociology, The Australian National University

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Larry Saha Room, HA2175, Level 2, Haydon-Allen Building, The Australian National University

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mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">A major project of environmental migration research continues to be the characterisation of mobility experiences along the spectrum of forced and voluntary. Motivating this research is concern over the welfare of migrants and the prospect of unleashing the development potential brought about by migrants as ‘agents of adaptation’. Existing attempts to characterise migration often fall into the trap of viewing migration as either positive (voluntary) or negative (forced) without acknowledging the often ambiguous nature of the migration experience. While it is not always easy for policy-makers to deal with ambiguity, there remains a critical need for researchers to explore characterisations of mobility that resonate with migrants' experiences over time. The recent focus on the role of emotions (or, for some, ‘affect’) presents an opportunity to explore more nuanced characterisations of the migration experience (Gorman-Murray 2009). One in which the negative experiences of migration after an experience of environmental risk can be ‘managed’ by people as part of the pursuit of broader life projects. The engagement of emotion with other aspects of social life or ‘affective practices’ (Wetherell 2012) provides too, a lens in which ‘worldly’ concerns become entangled in daily life, including the experience of migration.