Environmental History of Modern Migrations

233 Pages·2017·1.378 MB·English

by  Armiero, Marco(Editor);Tucker, Richard(Editor)

Environmental History of
Modern Migrations
In the age of climate change, the possibility that dramatic environmental
transformations might cause the dislocation of millions of people has become
not only a matter for scientific speculations or science-fiction narratives, but
the object of strategic planning and military analysis.
Environmental History of Modern Migrations offers a worldwide perspective on
the history of migrations throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
and provides an opportunity to reflect on the global ecological transformations
and developments which have occurred throughout the last few centuries.
With a primary focus on the environment/migration nexus, this book advo-
cates that global environmental changes are not distinct from global social
transformations. Instead, it offers a progressive method of combining environ-
mental and social history, which manages to both encompass and transcend
current approaches to environmental justice issues.
This edited collection will be of great interest to students and practitioners
of environmental history and migration studies, as well as those with an interest
in history and sociology.
Marco Armiero is Director of the Environmental Humanities Laboratory
at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, where
he is also Associate Professor of Environmental History. He is the author of
A Rugged Nation. Mountains and the Making of Modern Italy (2011) and co-editor of
A History of Environmentalism. Local Struggles, Global Histories (2014), and Nature
and History in Modern Italy (2010). Armiero is a senior editor of Capitalism
Nature Socialism and associate editor of Environmental Humanities.
Richard Tucker is Adjunct Professor in the School of Natural Resources,
University of Michigan, USA. His earlier publications addressed the history of
environmental change in the colonial and tropical world, including Insatiable
Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World
(2000) and A Forest History of India (2010). His recent work addresses the envi-
ronmental history of warfare. He is the author of numerous essays and co-editor
of several multi-author books on the subject, including Natural Enemy, Natural
Ally: Toward an Environmental History of War (2004).
At last, a careful look at the linkages between migration and environmental
change in modern history! With an admirably international set of authors, this
collection ranges far and wide, both geographically and conceptually. It should
be a landmark in both global environmental history and the history of migration.
J.R. McNeill, Georgetown University, USA
All too often, studies that claim to be ground-breaking fail to live up to the
brag. This stimulating and very timely collection of essays exploring the mul-
tiple and complex connections between human migration and biophysical
environments represents a refreshing exception. In a study that is politically
committed to the cause of socio-environmental justice as well as intellectually
innovative, the authors engage with key notions such as corporeal ecology,
environmental nativism, nativist environmentalism and the environmental ref-
ugee/migrant. Editors Marco Armiero and Richard Tucker, who remind us
that ‘migrants are themselves nature on the move’, are to be congratulated for
launching a new research area within environmental history of urgent contem-
porary importance internationally.
Peter Coates, University of Bristol, UK
This innovative and timely volume will surely change the way we think about
the history of immigration. As these essays show, modern migrations are not
only a social and political processes; they also have important environmental
dimensions. Covering a wide geographic range—from Polynesia to Siberia,
from Brazil to China, the authors lay the groundwork for a new research agenda.
Linda Nash, University of Washington, USA
The editors have assembled an innovative group of contributors who challenge
scholars of migration and environmental studies to develop a new analytical
lens—one that posits mobile humans as part of nature and nature as constitutive
of mobile cultures and societies. A must-read.
Donna Gabaccia, University of Toronto, Canada
Routledge Environmental Humanities
Series editors: Iain McCalman and Libby Robin
Editorial Board
Christina Alt, St Andrews University, UK
Alison Bashford, University of Cambridge, UK
Peter Coates, University of Bristol, UK
Thom van Dooren, University of New South Wales, Australia
Georgina Endfield, University of Nottingham, UK
Jodi Frawley, University of Sydney, Australia
Andrea Gaynor, The University of Western Australia, Australia
Tom Lynch, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA
Jennifer Newell, American Museum of Natural History, New York, US
Simon Pooley, Imperial College London, UK
Sandra Swart, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota, US
Paul Warde, University of East Anglia, UK
Jessica Weir, University of Western Sydney, Australia
International Advisory Board
William Beinart, University of Oxford, UK
Sarah Buie, Clark University, USA
Jane Carruthers, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago, USA
Paul Holm, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Shen Hou, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
Rob Nixon, Princeton University, Princeton NJ, USA
Pauline Phemister, Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, UK
Deborah Bird Rose, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Sverker Sörlin, KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technology,
Stockholm, Sweden
Helmuth Trischler, Deutsches Museum, Munich and Co-Director, Rachel Carson Centre,
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany
Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University, USA
Kirsten Wehner, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, Australia
The Routledge Environmental Humanities series is an original and inspiring venture recognising that today’s
world agricultural and water crises, ocean pollution and resource depletion, global warming from green-
house gases, urban sprawl, overpopulation, food insecurity and environmental justice are all crises of culture.
The reality of understanding and finding adaptive solutions to our present and future environmen-
tal challenges has shifted the epicenter of environmental studies away from an exclusively scientific
and technological framework to one that depends on the human-focused disciplines and ideas of the
humanities and allied social sciences.
We thus welcome book proposals from all humanities and social sciences disciplines for an inclusive
and interdisciplinary series. We favour manuscripts aimed at an international readership and written in
a lively and accessible style. The readership comprises scholars and students from the humanities and
social sciences and thoughtful readers concerned about the human dimensions of environmental change.

Environmental History of
Modern Migrations
Edited by
Marco Armiero and Richard Tucker
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 selection and editorial matter, Marco Armiero and Richard
Tucker; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
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or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-84317-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-73110-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK
Contents
List of figures ix
List of tables xi
List of contributors xiii
Introduction: migrants in environmental history 1
MARCO ARMIERO AND RICHARD TUCKER
PART I
Changing natures 17
1 Waves of migration: settlement and creation of the
Hawaiian environment 19
CAROL MACLENNAN
2 European immigration and changes in the landscape
of southern Brazil 41
EUNICE SUELI NODARI AND
MIGUEL MUNDSTOCK XAVIER DE CARVALHO
3 Migrants and the making of the American landscape 53
MARCO ARMIERO
4 Making the land Russian? Migration, settlement, and
environment in the Russian Far East 1860–1914 71
MARK SOKOLSKY
5 Coal lives: body, work and memory among Italian
miners in Wallonia, Belgium 88
DANIELE VALISENA AND MARCO ARMIERO
viii Contents
PART II
Racializing natures 109
6 Riotous environments: Filipino immigrants in the
fields of California 111
LINDA L. IVEY
7 Creating the threatening “others”: environment, Chinese
immigrants and racist discourse in colonial Australia 124
FEI SHENG
8 Nativist politics and environmental privilege: ecological
and cultural conflicts concerning Latin American
migration to the United States 143
DAVID NAGUIB PELLOW AND LISA SUN-HEE PARK
PART III
Naturalizing causes 157
9 Environmental degradation as a cause of migration:
cautionary tales from Brazil 159
ANGUS WRIGHT
10 The ecological and social vulnerability of the
Three Gorges resettlement area in China, 1992–2012 177
YING XING
11 Archaeologies of the future: tracing the lineage
of contemporary discourses on the
climate–migration nexus 191
GIOVANNI BETTINI
Index 207
Figures
I.1 Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul, early twentieth century. Men,
women and children at work in a furnace xvi
1.1 Land utilization on O‘ahu, 1930 29
1.2 HSPA model plantation home, 1930s 34
2.1 Number of sawmills and types of woods in Rio Grande
do Sul and Santa Catarina, in the period from 1947 to 1967 48
2.2 Araucaria Forest Domain in southern Brazil and remnants
in the 1970s 49
3.1 Elwood City, Pennsylvania, 1920s. Alice Nardini and her son
in their backyard 60
4.1 The Russian Far East in 1860 73
4.2 Average monthly precipitation and temperatures in Vladivostok,
Tver’ (northeastern Russia), and Kharkhov (eastern Ukraine) 77
4.3 Mixed forest, Shkotovo region, Primorskii Krai, Autumn 2013 80
5.1 Wallonia 89
5.2 Coal builds the wealth of the country 92
7.1 Relic of alluvial field near a Chinese camp at Castlemaine,
Australia 127
7.2 Sydney Chinatown 138
10.1 Three Gorges Dam resettlement areas 181