Political conflicts related to immigration are thorny enough on their own. The issues and challenges intensify once we add to the mix our warming planet and its relationship to migration, immigration, and human displacement. Two 2024-25 CASBS fellows – Maureen Eger, a sociologist of immigration, and Alice Farmer, a refugee lawyer specializing in climate change and displacement – discuss scholarly and policy dimensions of the climate migration landscape in conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Markoff (CASBS fellow, 2017-18).

Maureen Eger: USC faculty page | personal website | Google Scholar page |

Alice Farmer: LinkedIn page | 

Read John Markoff's latest book, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand  (Penguin Random House, 2022). John's next book, expected in 2027, will be published by MIT Press.

Referenced in the episode or related works

L. Yang, M. Eger, and Link, eds. Migration Stigma: Understanding Prejudice, Discrimination, and Exclusion (MIT Press, 2024)

M. Eger and S Valdez, "From Radical Right to Neo-nationalist," European Political Scientist (2019)

M. Eger, M. Hjerm, and P. Velasquez, "What is the Liberalizing Potential of Higher Education? An Analysis of Academic Fields and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Across 32 Countries," The British Journal of Sociology (2025)

M. O'Brien and M. Eger, "Suppression, Spikes, and Stigma: How COVID-19 Will Shape International Migration and Hostilities toward It," International Migration Review (2020)

L. Yang, M. Eger, and B. Link, "The Human Cost of Politicizing Immigration: Migration Stigma, US Politics, and Health," JAMA (2024)

A. Farmer and K. Linos, "Tools to Finance Climate Mobility: An Introduction to the Symposium," American Journal of International Law (2025)

A. Farmer, "Disasters in Slow Motion: Why Climate Displacement Tests International Legal Frameworks, and What to Do about it," University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law (2026)

J. Bittle, The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration (Simon & Schuster, 2024)

G. Vince, Nomad Century: How Climate Migration will Reshape our World (Macmillan, 2022)

A. Lustgarten, On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America (Macmillan, 2024)

T. Hale, Long Problems: Climate Change and the Challenge of Governing Across Time (Princeton Univ. Press, 2024)

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University

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Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel