Let’s hit the road! Environmental hazards, materialities, and mobility justice: insights from Tajikistan’s Pamirs

Abstract

This article draws from the expanding field of climate mobilities, which explores the nexus between climate change, environmental conditions and (im)mobility based on the ‘mobilities paradigm’. Environmental hazards collide with transportation infrastructures, for instance through the adverse effects of floods, heat waves, and ice thawing on roads, and may for instance disrupt or hamper everyday mobility. Frequent disaster-induced mobility impairments may render individuals unable to commute between places and decrease their socioeconomic opportunities. Emphasising the material aspects of mobilities, this paper argues that an analysis of mobility systems helps to develop a deeper understanding of (im)mobility inequalities and injustices in the context of environmental risk and climate change. Sheller’s mobility justice perspective is taken as a way to critically address mobility disruptions and to reflect on the interconnection of different (im)mobility patterns. Empirically, the paper draws on a case-study of Tajikistan’s Bartang Valley, where disaster-induced mobility impairments reduce the residents’ capacities to circulate and access food markets, healthcare facilities, and job opportunities. Overall, the paper is an invitation for the fields of environmental and climate mobilities to consider the impacts of environmental conditions on infrastructures, matter, and things that enable or hamper human (im)mobility.