Dr Liz Hemsley
Postdoctoral Fellow, September 2024 – June 2025
Home Institution: University of Edinburgh
Liz holds a PhD in Political Theory from the University of Hong Kong, an MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh. Her research explores rights, duties, and opportunities associated with labour migration. She is mum to Emma, Marcus, and Alex.
Project Title: Climate Change, Environmental Destruction, and Labour Migration: Rights, Duties, and Opportunities
How might states create labour migration pathways for those whose standard means of income or subsistence has been lost as a result of climate-based environmental destruction? And what rights do those displaced by climate-based environmental destruction have to access labour opportunities in foreign states? My research builds from two distinct bodies of literature – the empirical literature on labour migration and the philosophical literature on the rights of the climate-displaced – to address these questions. My project has two parts. The empirical part will use case studies and examples from migration charities to identify how labour migration can be used as an alternative to asylum, to provide beneficial opportunities for displaced persons and the states that host them. The normative part will undertake an analysis of the rights that those experiencing environmental destruction have to access opportunities in foreign states. This will include an analysis of the scope and nature of any such rights, as well as an analysis of the duties that foreign states owe to those displaced by environmental destruction. The normative part of my project will take as its starting point the liberal commitment to the idea that all individuals possess equal rights to acquire from nature that which they need for their subsistence. It will then assess how this right is affected under conditions of scarcity, specifically where climate change destroys the abundance and productivity of natural resources for the humans who depend on them.
The main aims of this project are 1) to identify whether and how a right of labour migration might be grounded in the standard commitments of liberal political theory, given conditions of scarcity caused by climate change, and 2) to identify the kinds of policies that states can adopt to facilitate beneficial labour migration pathways for those affected by climate-based environmental destruction.