Climate Changed Refugee Border Stories and the Business of Misery

Climate Changed is an honest, humane account about the rapid downsizing of the world’s natural resources and the consequences this has for millions of people who, year after year, are displaced from their home countries because of politically-instigated and economically-justified war and conflict. Based on interviews with 110 refugees who arrived into Europe from 2015 to 2018 and observations of refugee camps, border crossings, inner-city slums, social housing projects, NGO and related refugee associations, this book offers a moving insight into the refugee experience of leaving home, crossing borders and settling in Europe. Briggs sets this against the geopolitical and commercial enterprise that dismantled refugees’ countries in the international chase for wilting quantities of the world’s natural resources. At every point of their journey to their new lives and in the resettlement process, the refugees are victimised and exploited, as there is always money to be made from them. Even if refugees’ labour is in demand, there is a European social climate of intolerance and stigma which jeopardises integration and counters their well-being and safety. The climate has changed. This book will appeal to students and scholars in core areas of sociology, environmental and sustainability studies, human geography, and politics. Policymakers, practitioners and voluntary workers within the sector of frontline immigration, as well as aid workers, town planners and welfare support staff, will also find this book of interest.

1. Exodus 2. Some Notes on the Methodology 3. Global Capitalism: Profit at Whatever Cost 4. Let’s Be Honest, What Is There to Debate about Climate Change? 5. The Business of Misery and the Refugee ‘Crisis’ 6. The Business of Misery: War Commerce and its Human Debris 7. The Business of Misery: Refugee Border Stories 8. A Formula for Failure: Welcome to Europe and the Realities of the ‘New Life’ 9. Climate Changed: The Future is Already Here 10. The Beginning of the End 11. Revelations

Daniel Briggs is an experienced ethnographer and social researcher who has studied some of the most disturbing and challenging social realities of the 21st century. He is currently a part-time lecturer in criminology at the Universidad Europea. His previous book, Dead End Lives: Drugs and Violence in the City Shadows, won the Outstanding Book Award 2018 at the Division of International Criminology, awarded by the American Society of Criminology.