Challenging Eurocentric perceptions of mobility justice through climate diaries

“What is climate change for you?” This was the question we posed to our research participants in the city of Saint Louis, Senegal to answer visually. Given alarmist racialized portrayals of so-called ‘climate migrants’ as an invasive threat from the Global South to Global North we examined how visual methods can challenge western production of knowledge around the climate crisis. Via our methodology of ‘climate diaries’, we asked participants to share photos and perceptions of the climate crisis over a period of time through a WhatsApp group. The photos we received in response reveal the intensity of the phenomenon on their lives. A question that we, as two European academics based in Italy, may struggle to answer as a lived experience, as a concept that directly afects our everyday lives. Perhaps we may think of Venice as it sinks (Elena), or the loods in the UK (Sarah), issues which connotate a spatio-temporal distance. But a question, that, as we shall see later in this blog, for our participants is a powerful force in the here and now of their everyday lives. Yet a force that is not purely ‘natural’, but instead intertwined with structural political, economic and cultural factors that worsen the impacts of the climate crisis upon everyday lives.