Project by Huub Dijstelbloem (PI), Colin Hickey, Enrike van Wingerden, Darshan Vigneswaran, Vittoria Scalera
The global shift toward sustainable energy brings with it complex human consequences. Funded through the University of Amsterdam’s ENLENS Grant, this project examines how critical infrastructures of the energy transition – such as dams, wind farms, lithium mines, and solar fields – generate new forms of population displacement and enforced immobility. While the need to decarbonize is urgent, energy projects reshape local environments, displace communities, and confront deeply rooted attachments to place. By focusing on these underexplored dynamics, the project addresses a critical gap at the intersection of climate mobility and energy transition research.
Through four emblematic European cases – the Turnu MÄgurele-Nikopol hydropower project (Romania-Bulgaria), solar development in the Guadalhorce Valley (Spain), the Barroso lithium mine (Portugal), and the Fosen Vind Project (Norway) – the team explores how communities experience, resist, and negotiate displacement. The research develops a conceptual framework that traces the tension between circulation (of energy, resources, and labor) and attachment (to landscapes, homes, and livelihoods), mapping how infrastructure both enables and constrains mobility.
Drawing on philosophy of technology, migration studies, environmental politics, and economics, the project brings an interdisciplinary perspective to debates on just transitions and managed retreat. Beyond academic contributions, it seeks to inform governance strategies, contribute to the field of climate mobilities, and amplify the voices of affected communities. Outcomes will include scholarly publications, a white paper, and public events that make visible the human geographies of the energy transition.