Studies on the nexus of climate change, health and immigration have largely focused on climate change as posing challenges to health and thus acting as a push-factor for migration. However, our understanding of how climate is impacting the health of immigrants in places of migration destination is still poor. Further limiting our understanding of potential climate and health injustices, immigrant communities in Europe are far from homogenous, and are often racialized groups of great ethnic diversity.
In IMBRACE (Embracing Immigrant Knowledges for Just Climate Health Adaptation), we will examine what shapes immigrants’ climate health vulnerability and how their situated knowledges and practices can inform both their own response capacities and urban climate adaptation more broadly, towards more effective and just approaches.
Objectives
First, we will explore tangible (e.g. access to resources and infrastructure) and intangible factors (e.g. trust towards institutions, different knowledge systems that inform action) to understand what climate health vulnerability consists of. The research will focus on two types of climate impacts and their implications for health and well being:
Increased and prolonged heat
Intense rainfall and flooding
Second, focusing on 6 case-study cities in Europe, we will examine the root causes of such vulnerability, looking at aspects like systemic and historical contexts of intersectional injustice that express in discrimination, racism and social inequality, specifically as those affect migrants from majority world contexts.
Third, and connected, we see immigrants as agents of knowledge, practice, and political subjectivity. We thus examine the everyday, personal, collective, and integrated ways in which migrants understand and confront vulnerability, and the ways they engage with, question and imagine urban climate adaptation.
Climate change, health and immigration
Climate change, health and immigration
Climate change, health and immigration
Climate change, health and immigration
Climate change, health and immigration
Climate change, health and immigration
Meet Our Team
Our teams brings together researchers from different..
Panagiota is a senior researcher at ICTA-UAB, a core member of the Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability (BCNUEJ.org) and the PI of IMBRACE. She is a biologist by training (National University of Athens, Greece), with a Master’s degree on Environmental Studies (Universidade de Aveiro, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), and a PhD in Development Studies from the University of Bonn (ZEF -Center for development Studies). Her research spans from the politics of water and sanitation development to the bio/necro-politics of public health, the neoliberalisation of urban nature, and the grassroots struggles for urban climate and health justice, particularly in relation to migration and racialized groups. She has been co-PI in the H2020 WEGO-ITN (www.wegoitn.org) on feminist political ecology and a founding member of the Undisciplined Environments collective. (Languages: Eng, Cat, Spa, Greek)
Recent publications:
Anguelovski, I., Kotsila, P., Lees, L., Triguero-Mas, M. and Calderón-Argelich, A., 2024. From heat racism and heat gentrification to urban heat justice in the USA and Europe. Nature Cities, pp.1-9.
Undisciplined Environments Collective (Diego Andreucci, Gustavo García-López, Rita Calvário, Panagiota Kotsila, Salvatore Paolo De Rosa, Giorgos Velegrakis, Amelie Huber, Ilenia Iengo, Marien González-Hidalgo, Irene Leonardelli, and Irmak Ertör) (eds), 2024. Insurgent Ecologies: Between Environmental Struggles and Postcapitalist Transformations. Fernwood Publishing Halifax & Winnipeg Excerp.
Sergio has been a postdoctoral researcher at the lab since 2024. His main research interests include processes of urban commoning and self-organisation, militant and engaged approaches to research, and environmental justice. He works for the ERC-CoG IMBRACE project, which looks at what shapes immigrants’ climate health vulnerability and how situated knowledges inform both their own response capacities and urban climate adaptation more broadly, towards more effective and just approaches. From 2018 to 2022 Sergio was a doctoral Marie-Skłodowska fellow with the RECOMS ITN and completed his PhD at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry University in 2023. That same year, he got a postdoctoral position at University of Barcelona working on the H2020 CULTIVATE project, where he examined processes of urban food sharing in Europe. Sergio’s academic praxis is informed by his involvement in several grassroots organisations struggling for socioenvironmental justice. He has also been regularly involved in teaching since 2018, from undergraduate to doctoral levels.
Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth.
Fizza holds a double M.Sc. in International Cooperation in Urban Development from TU Darmstadt in Germany, with a specialisation in Sustainable Emergency Architecture from UIC Barcelona in Spain. She started her career as an architect in Pakistan and graduated summa cum laude from NED University. Her work and engagement with development agencies, governments, research institutes, nonprofits and the private sector have helped her cultivate a multidisciplinary and systems thinking approach. At BCNUEJ, she is part of the ERC-CoG IMBRACE project, which investigates the intersectional drivers of climate health vulnerability for majority world immigrants across European cities. Building on her urbanist background, she aims to explore the nexus between immigrants and local adaptive solutions, contributing to scholarship and policy advocacy on postcolonial feminist urbanism.
Kim holds a BSc in Pharmacology from the University of Leeds and an MSc in International Public Health from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and is also completing an MSc in Political Ecology, Environmental Justice, and Degrowth at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She has a background in the medico-humanitarian sector and her expertise lies at the intersection of climate change, armed conflict, displacement, and health, primarily in Majority World contexts. She brings a multidisciplinary approach to her work, combining epidemiology, social sciences research, and policy advocacy to address complex global challenges. As part of the IMBRACE team, Kim’s work focuses on the climate health vulnerabilities of immigrants in Dublin and Antwerp. Her research explores how and why immigrants are disproportionately affected by flooding and extreme precipitation, examining the factors shaping their vulnerabilities and the ways in which their situated knowledge informs their adaptive responses. Through her work, she aims to contribute to more effective and equitable urban climate adaptation strategies that prioritise justice and inclusivity.
Lourenço is a research assistant for the IMBRACE project, with a master's degree in Political Ecology from ICTA-UAB. Over the past few years, he has been actively engaged in Barcelona's housing movement, more specifically in the Sindicat d'Habitatge del Raval, a local housing union, as well being involved in self-managed, squatted militant spaces in his neighbourhood, such as the Antiga Massana and the Agora Juan Andrés Benitez. He was previously the project manager for BCNUEJ's "Raval Resilient" project, which employed the Photovoice methodology to explore the links between extreme climate events and the health of migrants.