Setting the Stage: Why We Gathered
The impacts of climate change disproportionately affect migrant communities. This pressing reality was explored in depth during our two-day IMBRACE workshop, held in June 2025 at the cooperative space Lleialtat Santsenca in Barcelona’s Sants neighbourhood. Twenty-seven participants joined us to discuss and reflect on the key drivers of climate-related health vulnerabilities facing migrants living in European cities. These drivers emerged from desk-based scoping reviews of the academic literature—one focusing on heat-related impacts, and another on flood-related ones.
The IMBRACE project examines how migrants’ health is affected by climate change, focusing on extreme heat in Barcelona, Berlin, and Athens, and extreme rainfall and flooding in Dublin, Marseille, and Antwerp. These cities were selected due to their significant populations from Majority World countries and their recent exposure to climate extremes. Prior to starting fieldwork, IMBRACE conducted two scoping reviews that resulted in reports on climate-related health vulnerabilities, and is now seeking diverse perspectives to enrich its analysis.
To that end, on June 16–17, we brought together a group of academics, activists, policymakers, and health professionals from various European cities who work at the intersection of migrant health and climate change. The workshop provided a valuable space for discussion, reflection, and critical engagement with our findings.
Fostering Diverse Dialogue
Bringing together a diverse group with different backgrounds, lived experiences, and places of origin was both a valuable opportunity and a logistical challenge. As IMBRACE is an academic project, we were especially mindful of creating a workshop format that was inclusive and accessible—particularly for participants from outside academia. A central goal was to engage with different forms of knowledge and lived experience that often go unrecognized in academic spaces.
That’s why the participation of a nurse working in a health centre in a predominantly migrant neighbourhood, an activist from a BIPOC climate collective, or a local policymaker was so essential. These perspectives grounded our discussions in real-life contexts and enriched our understanding of climate-related health vulnerabilities on the ground.
To support open dialogue, we intentionally designed the workshop to foster comfortable, participatory spaces. We frequently broke into small groups to allow for deeper discussion and included plenty of informal time—during meals and coffee breaks—for participants to connect more organically.
We also curated a photography exhibition based on the Photovoice project Raval Resilient. The project features photographs taken by migrants documenting spaces of relief and discomfort during heatwaves in Barcelona’s El Raval neighbourhood. Conducted two years ago, it was led by Panagiota Kotsila and Lourenço Melo from the IMBRACE team, in collaboration with Valeria Cuenca and Prof. Manuel Franco (Universidad de Alcalá) and BC3 in Bilbao. The exhibition was curated by artist Dennis Dizon.
Presenting Our Initial Findings: Drivers of Migrant Climate-Related Health Vulnerability
Through our reviews, we identified eight core drivers of vulnerability relevant to both heat- and flood-related impacts, with a ninth specific to flooding. These ranged from systemic inequality and discriminatory policy environments to gaps in urban infrastructure and health systems. Some drivers are deeply embedded, historical, and structural—linked to racism, class, or migration status—while others are more context-specific, such as disaster risk reduction planning or the availability of translation services during emergencies. These all interact with broader factors like housing conditions and neighbourhood characteristics.
Our findings show that migrants are more likely to live in overcrowded, poorly insulated housing, often without home insurance, facing energy poverty, and lacking access to cooling or anti-flood infrastructure. This increases the risk of illnesses related to extreme heat or flooding—such as dehydration, cardiovascular conditions, respiratory illness, and mental health challenges.
Migrants often work in high-exposure jobs with limited protections, compounding the effects of extreme weather. During floods, they face additional barriers to receiving emergency alerts or accessing healthcare, due to language barriers, legal status, or precarious housing. Undocumented migrants are particularly vulnerable, often avoiding services out of fear of exposure to direct or indirect institutional violence, including deportation. Both reports emphasize systemic racism, social exclusion, and housing inequality as key drivers of health vulnerabilities.
By synthesizing the literature into a framework of interrelated vulnerability drivers, we aim to move beyond abstract metrics and toward a justice-centred understanding—one that recognizes migrants not as passive recipients of aid, but as active agents in shaping climate adaptation strategies.
Reflections on the Discussions
To help participants prepare for the workshop, we shared the reports in advance. On the first day, we presented summaries of each report, followed by Q&A sessions to clarify questions and concerns. We then broke into smaller groups of 4–5 people to discuss the relevance of the identified drivers, whether any were missing, and which were most urgent in participants’ local contexts. Participants also shared effective policies or actions from their work.
These discussions were deeply enriching. Drawing from their diverse backgrounds and experiences, participants critically engaged with our findings—validating much of our work, while also expanding it. A key theme was the intersection of race, legal status, housing, employment, and healthcare access in compounding climate-related health risks.
A particularly important insight was the need to re-examine our terminology. Some participants challenged the use of the term “migrant,” arguing that it was overly broad and could lead to generalizations. Alternatives such as “people on the move” were proposed to better capture the precarity and shifting legal statuses experienced by many. Others emphasized that migrants are often “illegalized” by systems, rather than simply undocumented. This discussion underscored how terminology matters—and how migrants’ origin, remittance obligations, and legal conditions all shape their vulnerability.
Health workers and activists highlighted the invisibility of certain migrant sub-groups—particularly queer youth and undocumented individuals—and emphasized the lack of adequate mental health support for these populations. They also noted the need for more intersectional research on how these groups are affected by climate-related extremes.
Policymakers pointed to the disconnect between flood risk models and lived realities—such as chronic dampness, informal housing, and the cumulative impacts of prolonged rainy weather—that are not captured in current vulnerability metrics. For instance, for homeless migrants, the safety risks of living in exposed areas may outweigh the direct impacts of flooding.
Another recurring theme was the psychosocial toll of repeated displacements and the need for stronger support systems.
Looking Ahead: Knowledge Exchange and Collaboration
Participants’ feedback underscored the importance of addressing structural determinants of health—such as precarious housing, exploitative labour, and unequal access to services. A notable gap identified was the lack of reliable data on how these conditions translate into specific health outcomes, especially for racialized migrants in Europe.
Many also emphasized the importance of examining bottom-up initiatives that renegotiate access to basic services and urban rights. Community health workers and trusted local organizations were highlighted as key actors in climate emergency preparedness.
Creating spaces where affected communities, health professionals, activists, and policymakers can exchange knowledge is a core goal of the IMBRACE project. These conversations are essential for ensuring that research contributes to the co-creation of equitable adaptation policies that include migrant perspectives.
Interactive Feedback and Future Steps
As part of the workshop, we set up an interactive feedback board with three overlapping circles labelled “Activism,” “Policy,” and “Research.” Participants were invited to place post-it notes where they felt their input best fit. They reflected on questions the project should explore, how results should be communicated, and how they’d like to collaborate going forward.
The feedback was rich and inspiring. Participants raised questions like: “How does the project respond to growing anti-migrant sentiment and politics?” and “How are communities directly benefiting from your research?” Others stressed the value of embodied and situated knowledge—asking, “What can we learn from newcomers?” and calling for outputs that reflect the lived realities of queer, trans, disabled, and sex worker migrants.
Participants also suggested accessible and creative formats—storytelling videos, infographics, manuals for participatory methods, and multilingual publications. There was strong interest in continued collaboration, including co-authored publications, conference sessions, workshops, and public-facing media like photo exhibitions. Several emphasized the importance of community-led approaches, co-produced knowledge, and sustained support for local networks and movements.
The board became more than just a tool for gathering ideas—it was a collaborative space for shaping the project’s direction, values, and outputs.
Final Reflections
We sincerely thank all the workshop participants. Your insights and expertise have already had a profound impact on our work, and will directly guide IMBRACE’s research in Barcelona, Berlin, Athens, Dublin, Marseille, and Antwerp.
Collaboration is essential—not just for understanding how climate change affects migrant health, but for designing responses that tackle the structural drivers of vulnerability that affect so many today.
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